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Google AMP Driving Traffic For Publishers

After Facebook announced it would change its newsfeed last month, demoting content from media and brands and promoting posts from users, publishers went into a tailspin.


Those that had put trust and marketing effort into the social-media platform were worried what this would mean for their bottom line. Many also expressed a sense of betrayal

Enter the other half of the digital advertising duopoly, Google, which also had publishers upset with the introduction of its Chrome Ad Blocker. But it might have some good news for them, too.

According to a recent story by Axios, after Google decided to “double down” on news by focusing on its AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) capabilities, which loads articles faster on Google Search and Google News, publishers saw their traffic numbers spike.

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Chartbeat found publishers are seeing referral traffic come from Google AMP more than any other platform. In fact, during the week of February 8, 2018, publishers saw 801 million weekly page views from AMP-enabled pages, and only 290 million from pages not supported by AMP.

The data also suggests that a majority of traffic seen by publishers is coming from mobile platforms. Mobile traffic has reportedly increased by 100% since 2017.

This all comes at a time when Facebook has seen its referral traffic decline as more publishers have abandoned Instant Articles, a once popular tool that has lost its luster.

According to data from Parse.ly, also cited by Axios, Google’s total referrals have increased to 43.3%, while Facebook’s have declined to a 25.3% piece of the pie. Those numbers also paint a stark picture of just how powerful the two platforms are.

How will Google’s effort to promote news affect its attractiveness to publishers?

That depends on how well publishers can turn that traffic into a trusted revenue source. Google reports publishers earnings hit nearly $6 million per week over the past year when they used AMP, due to Google AdSense and Doubleclick Ad Exchange revenue. However, the platform is still in third place after Facebook and YouTube when it comes to monetization.

But as Facebook’s popularity continues to slide, and mobile usage continues to gain in popularity, Chartbeat's numbers could put even more momentum behind Google.

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