Instant-loading AMP pages from your own domain

Wednesday, April 17, 2019

Today we are rolling out support in Google Search’s
AMP web results
(also known as “blue links”) to link to
signed exchanges,
an emerging new feature of the web enabled by the
IETF web packaging specification.
Signed exchanges enable displaying the publisher’s domain when content is instantly loaded using
Google Search. This is available in browsers that support the necessary web platform feature—as of
the time of writing, Google Chrome—and availability will expand to include other browsers as they
gain support (for example, the upcoming version of Microsoft Edge).

Background on AMP’s instant loading

One of AMP’s biggest user benefits has been the unique ability to instantly load AMP web pages
that users click in Google Search. Near-instant loading works by requesting content ahead of
time, balancing the likelihood of a user clicking on a result with device and network
constraints—and
doing it in a privacy-sensitive way.

We believe that privacy-preserving instant loading web content is a transformative user
experience, but in order to accomplish this, we had to make trade-offs; namely, the
URLs
displayed in browser address bars begin with google.com/amp, as a consequence of being shown in
the Google AMP Viewer, rather than display the domain of the publisher. We heard both user and
publisher feedback over this, and last year we
identified
a web platform innovation that provides a solution that shows the content’s original URL while
still retaining AMP’s instant loading.

Introducing signed exchanges

A signed exchange is a file format, defined in the
web packaging specification,
that allows the browser to trust a document as if it belongs to your
origin. This lets you use
first-party cookies and storage to customize content and simplify analytics integration. Your page
appears under your URL instead of the google.com/amp URL.

Google Search links to signed exchanges when the publisher, browser, and the Search experience
context all support it. As a publisher, you will need to publish both the signed exchange version
of the content in addition to the non-signed exchange version. Learn more about how
Google Search supports signed exchange.

Getting started with signed exchanges

Many publishers have already begun to publish signed exchanges since the
developer preview
opened up last fall. To implement signed exchanges in your own serving infrastructure, follow the
guide
Serve AMP using Signed Exchanges
available at amp.dev.

If you use a CDN provider, ask them if they can provide AMP signed exchanges.
Cloudflare
has recently
announced
that it is offering signed exchanges to all of its customers without payment.

Check out our resources like the
Google Search Central community
və ya
get in touch with members of the AMP Project
with any questions. You can also
provide feedback on the signed exchange specification.

Posted by Devin Mullins and Greg Rogers