Often, jumping on a Google-initiated bandwagon is one of the most sensible choices you can make. Google has had its fair share of – Google Plus is one of many mistakes that come to mind – but as a website owner or administrator, you should generally do something good for your website if you have followed Google’s lead. After all, Google is the world’s largest search engine, a company that knows what it’s doing, and above all – a company that can dictate trends.
However, some wagons may not take you where you need to be. Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project is a perfect example of a trend that looks appealing to everyone but benefits only some.. If you are looking for a way to disable Google AMP on your WordPress website, we will show you the right way to do it.
In this article you will learn:
When it comes to delivering a good user experience, the mobile web has always been a steep hill to climb. Internet speeds are slower, screens are smaller, navigation is more difficult, and it joined the game at the point where the entire internet was set up for big-screen, desktop-processed, stable-. line broadband-enabled experience.
But here’s the trick: people still wanted to browse the web on their mobile devices.. In its infinite wisdom, Google decided to take steps to improve the mobile browsing experience by helping mobile pages load faster with AMP — a project that creates simplified, mobile-friendly versions of web pages and occasionally stores them on Google’s servers for quick fetching.
While this may work well for some publishers, many see no benefit from using it. No reduced bounce rates, increased page load, or any other changes for the better. But the real problem is that for some websites, Google AMP actually did the opposite of what it promised..
Google AMP provides a simplified, simplified version of a page, making it difficult to navigate on your website. This can result in a decrease in page views, conversion rates, and lower engagement rates. So AMP really only works on pages with the most basic elements. Add a popup or form; You can get better service by using mobile-friendly web design and doing other things to provide a better mobile experience.. Choosing a responsive premium multipurpose WordPress theme and optimizing images serves better than using AMP.
You’ve probably enabled Google AMP on your website using either one. official plugin or better rated competitorat some point you will need to uninstall the plugin to disable AMP on your website. However, you should not rush – disabling Google AMP requires a more methodical approach.
Google recommends starting the process by removing the rel=”amphtml” link from the HTML of your non-AMP page. Why should you? Because this little piece of code tells Googlebot that the page it is visiting has an AMP version.. This is not something you want to continue, so you need a way to stop it.
If you are not a developer, you will need a good plugin that will help you remove all those links while Google is re-indexing your website.. that’s exactly it Real Time Find and Replace can help you with. So go ahead and install and enable it.
After installing and activating, you can find the plugin settings under it. Tools > Real Time Find and Replace. After clicking the “Add” button, you will see two fields followed by some options. Enter this code in the “Find” field:
<link rel="amphtml" href="https://qodeinteractive.com/magazine/disable-google-amp-in-wordpress/(.+)" >
Leave the “Change” field blank and be sure to check the box next to RegEx. Once done, click the “Update Settings” button.
With this, you stop telling Googlebot about AMP versions of your pages. It would also be a good idea to tell Google to stop crawling your AMP pages.. If you’re using the AMP for WP plugin, it’s as simple as adding it. As an additional tag for the header section under SEO. Otherwise, you will need to learn a little about search engine indexing and add tags manually.
It may take a while for Google to realize what you’re doing there, so while you wait for AMP pages to gradually move away from search results, you can also set up a few redirects to ensure viewers reach non-AMP content. There are two ways to set up a 301 redirect in WordPress, and both can come in handy.
First, let’s see how you should set everything up using everything. Redirect plugin. Find, install and activate.
After installing the plugin, you can find it below. Tools > Forwarding. Click the “Add New” button and enter the following code in the Source URL field:
/(.*)\/amp
Make sure to check the “Regular Expression” box in the drop-down menu to the right of the source URL field.. In the Destination URL field, enter:
https://domainname.com/$1
You should replace “Domain name” with the real name of your domain name. Press the Add Redirect button when you are done.
This should do it, at least if you’re done setting up redirects using the plugin. If you are adventurous and understand what FTP is and how to use it, you can try adding the following code to the end of your .htaccess file:
# Redirect from AMP to non-AMP path
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (.+)/amp(.*)$
RewriteRule ^ %1/ [R=301,L]
And when all this is done, you can go ahead and disable the plugin.. If you still find that Google is serving your AMP pages, your next step would be to reach out to the plugin developers or your host.
Let’s wrap it up!
Installing Google AMP is an easy mistake if you’re not sure if you really need it. But while it’s definitely best to avoid making such a mistake, it’s important to know that with a little practice you can fix it. While not as easy as pie, you should be able to disable Google AMP with nothing more than a few plugins and a bit of code.
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