It shows a flag. This is an indication to the user to pick this site over others. Maybe not initially but unless someone proves to me, with data, that this won't affect what users click on I do not believe this won't affect user behavior. This is an indirect ranking.
> This is an indication to the user to pick this site over others.
This is an indication to the user that the site has certain traits (particularly, the UX they experience with AMP sites), and that if they like those traits, they should pick the site over others, and conversely if they dislike those traits, they should favor sites without the indicator over those with it.
> Maybe not initially but unless someone proves to me, with data, that this won't affect what users click on I do not believe this won't affect user behavior.
Obviously it is going to affect user behavior.
> This is an indirect ranking.
No, its information (the same as providing, e.g., [PDF] notations), not "indirect ranking". How it affects behavior, like a file-format flag, is dependent on the value (positive or negative) the user ascribes to the trait it provides notice of.
> This is an indication to the user that the site has certain traits (particularly, the UX they experience with AMP sites), and that if they like those traits, they should pick the site over others, and conversely if they dislike those traits, they should favor sites without the indicator over those with it.
You can make a website load like AMP without going through AMP. This is not an indication of a UX trait, this is an indication of using Google's technology and nothing more.
If you have Website A using AMP and Website B not using AMP but able to load in the same way, the Google search is going to show a label next to Website A and not Website B. Do you feel that this is fair? Or another way to force operators to now generate an AMP version of their website? Because I see this as the latter.
> No, its information (the same as providing, e.g., [PDF] notations), not "indirect ranking". How it affects behavior, like a file-format flag, is dependent on the value (positive or negative) the user ascribes to the trait it provides notice of.
Ranking determines where a website shows up and affects user behavior by users choosing the higher ranked websites. This has the same behavior without reordering things. I would call that a form of ranking but this is just splitting hairs; we're saying the same things.
Is that behavior not eventually used to influence ranking? If users continue to click AMP results more often than non-AMP I'm pretty sure the google algorithm will start favoring AMP.
> If users continue to click AMP results more often than non-AMP I'm pretty sure the google algorithm will start favoring AMP.
Perhaps, but, by the same token then, if users find AMP UX to be a bad tradeoff, and tend to click AMP results less often than non-AMP, the algorithm will start to penalize AMP.
dude, get real. if google really wanted to just be helpful to the users they could just put some kind open-source, investigable metric of web page load speed. or full front-page load payload size.
if the flag is google-service-specific, it's not "just information"
Its only "Google service" in that Google runs an AMP cache service the same as anyone else could; its open source project with open governance that manages its own open spec.
This is a different feature unrelated to the launch today. It doesn't always show on top, but often will because the sites posting AMP content tend to rank well.
