What is AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages)?
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is an open-source HTML framework that allows site owners to create mobile-friendly versions of their sites.
Google spearheaded the AMP project and was popular back when most sites were not mobile-friendly. Instead of developing a mobile version of their site separately, a site owner could create an AMP version of their website for mobile devices.
AMP started appearing in Google results in February 2016. Google hosted the cached AMP version of a website on its own servers. They were easier to navigate, loaded faster, and used less data than regular web pages.
But Google dropped preferential treatment for AMP sites with the June 16 – September 2, 2021 Page Experience Update. Several other sites have also ended support or preferential treatment for AMP sites.
Note: While AMP originally stood for Accelerated Mobile Pages, in 2019, Google revealed that AMP is a standalone word and no longer an acronym for Accelerated Mobile Pages.