Google solves its AMP URL problem

Google has announced that by the second half of 2018 it will roll out a change in the way Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) content shows up in searches: Results will display the URL of the original publisher of the content, rather than a Google URL as happens now.

Malte Ubl, technology lead for the AMP Project at Google, announced that the proposed solution will implement a new version of the AMP Cache serving based on the emerging Web Packaging standard, as recommended by the W3C TAG.

�� You don't like https://t.co/tpOl8FTL7v URLs? Neither do we��
And so we are making the changes to no longer need them while retaining the performance & privacy benefits of AMP.
Read this post for details & thanks so much for all the feedback! ❤️https://t.co/qdJmVfpSm5

— Malte Ubl (@cramforce) January 9, 2018

"We have built a prototype based on the Chrome Browser and an experimental version of Google Search to make sure it actually does deliver on both the desired UX and performance in real use cases," said Ubl in his post. "This step gives us confidence that we have a promising solution to this hard problem and that it will soon become the way that users will encounter AMP content on the web."

For publishers that have adopted the AMP framework and for those on the fence, this is great news. Ubi notes in the post that the current versions of iOS and Android already implement workarounds to show the publisher URLs, but adds that the newly announced fix will solve the problem "where it matters most: on the web and the browser URL bar."