It's hard to have a good-faith debate about AMP when Google says that AMP sites aren't given favor in search results, by defining the carousel as not being part of search results.
I don't think people our target is more inclined into clicking on AMP results as they're non-technical, I'm guessing we're higher in the results.
Well yes, it is faster because of the strict guidelines you must follow; it's cleaner because we are not including the menu stuff and things we need for desktop, and it's better adapted for mobile since it's the only platform in which Google puts AMP results.
I'm very happy with the surge of visits, but my point was that if Google says AMP won't give you a better position on search results, what I'm seeing is the opposite.
The whole point of AMP is to target those users. Hence the little lightning bolt. Even non-technical users can notice "hey this had a lightning bolt and it was fast"
But I'm digressing, what I'm seeing it's a sudden and constant traffic increase in a short time span. I'm sure it's not because the result that was on 3rd place now has a bolt icon and users are craving it; it's because my result is higher.
Search ranking is complex, and sites move in search referrals by ~30% on a daily basis without making any changes. Perhaps a different major site removed pages. Perhaps a few important links were added to your site (or to a site linking to your site).
to say that the boosted position/visibility of AMP can somehow get lost in the "noise" of rank fluctuations from other factors is demonstrably false. i dunno what kool-aid you guys are selling over there, but i'm certainly not buying it.
the mission of AMP is fully Google-centric, not user centric. it is possible and easy to build pages faster than AMP without any of AMP's additional artificial limitations. AMP's carrot is that you get much greater visibility and faster loading as a result of pages being hosted on google's servers and loading via a pre-established TLS/TCP session.
you can read more here: https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/78fevc/amplify_...
real-world AMP pages are not what they're billed to be:
In the search industry, the organic search results are what you're referring to when talking about the ranking algorithm, and of a ranking factor being given an advantage.
Having other verticals integrated like maps, news, or this carousal are seen as different elements altogether (eg. local search, shopping search).
But of course, colloquially, "search" just means any result that comes up when you search on the page. So this has created some friction when Google says that Amp pages have no impact on search.
This is why we can't have the discussion with Google; they are knowingly deflecting.