Would you like to turn off Google AMP in WordPress? For various reasons, many bloggers and websites who jumped on the Google AMP bandwagon are now disabling it. The problem is that turning off Google AMP isn’t as simple as it seems. We’ll show you how to disable Google AMP in WordPress properly in this article.
Why and Who Should Disable Google AMP in WordPress?
Accelerated Mobile Pages, or AMP, is an open source initiative aimed at making the web faster for mobile users while also improving user experience.
It accomplishes this by serving pages that contain only the most basic HTML and JavaScript. This enables Google AMP Cache to host the content. When users click on your link in the search results, Google can serve this cached version to them instantly.
In our guide on how to set up Google AMP in WordPress, we shared our concerns as well as issues raised by other bloggers.
Since then, AMP has been abandoned by many website owners, influential bloggers, and online publications. Many of them explained why they made their decision.
Alex Kras, for example, went into great detail about why he decided to turn off AMP on his website.
He also talked about what happened a month after he turned off Google AMP.
The traffic rate appears to be stable, and all metrics appear to be improving. To be fair, I have published four new articles since disabling AMP, so the new content could have given my numbers a boost.
Many influencers, bloggers, and developers share the following concerns.
Conversion Rates Have Dropped Significantly
AMP makes use of a limited set of HTML/JS. Site owners have little control over whether or not users subscribe, fill out contact forms, or make purchases.
Mobile users have fewer page views.
The navigation menus, sidebars, and other content discovery features of your website are not visible in AMP. Mobile users see a significant drop in pageviews as a result of this.
In fact, according to some user experience experts, the top-right close button encourages users to return to Google search after reading your article rather than browsing your website.
Lower User Engagement
Many websites, such as click-to-tweet widgets, user ratings, and comments, rely heavily on user interaction. Website owners will find it difficult to keep users engaged and interact with their content thanks to Google AMP.
Is It Necessary to Disable Google AMP?
The answer to this question is dependent on the nature of your website. If your audience is primarily made up of mobile users, you may still want to use AMP.
If, on the other hand, you’ve tried Google AMP and found that it’s had a negative impact on your conversion rates, you should probably turn it off.
Google does not penalize websites that do not use AMP, contrary to popular belief. To compete for the mobile search audience, you can still improve your website’s speed and performance on mobile.
Step 1: Disabling Google AMP in WordPress
You can add AMP support to your website using a couple of WordPress plugins. Regardless of which plugin you use, the basic settings remain the same.
The first thing you should do is disable the AMP plugin. To deactivate the AMP plugin, go to the plugins page and click the deactivate link below it.
The AMP support on your website will be disabled if you deactivate the plugin.
Step 2: Configuring Redirects
Disabling the AMP plugin will remove the AMP version of your articles from your website, but this is insufficient, especially if AMP has been enabled for more than a week.
There’s a good chance Google already has those pages cached in its index and will continue to display them in search results.
To resolve this issue, users who arrive at AMP pages should be redirected to non-AMP pages.
We’ll show you two different ways to set up Google AMP redirects. You are free to select the option that is most convenient for you.
Method 1: Use a redirect plugin.
The Redirection plugin must first be installed and activated. See our step-by-step guide to installing a WordPress plugin for more information.
To set up redirects, go to Tools » Redirection after activation.
Add the following code to the source URL field first: AMP Redirect
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/(.*)\/amp |
You must enter your website’s URL in the target URL field in the following format:
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http://example.com/$1 |
Remember to substitute your own domain name for example.com.
Select Redirections from the Group drop-down menu after checking the Regex checkbox.
Finally, to save your changes, click the ‘Add Redirect’ button.
To test whether the redirect is working properly, go to an AMP page on your website.
Method 2: Set Redirects in.htaccess Manually
If you don’t want to use a plugin to set up redirects, you can use your WordPress hosting account’s .htaccess file to do so.
To begin, use an FTP client or cPanel’s File Manager to connect to your website. After you’ve connected, go to your website’s root folder and edit the .htaccess file.
Simply put, at the bottom of your .htaccess file, add the following code:
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// Redirect AMP to non-AMP RewriteEngine OnRewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (.+)/amp(.*)$RewriteRule ^ %1/ [R=301,L] |
Don’t forget to save your changes and upload the file back to your server.
You can now check that the redirect is working properly by visiting the AMP version of any post on your website.
We hope that this article has helped you disable Google AMP in WordPress properly.
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