An SEO professional was having trouble with their pages not being indexed due to their AMP page implementation.
Their developer explained that some pages were not being indexed because of the unsupported HTML tag attributes. However, the page is only on their blog and their normal site is not affected by this issue. Their blog is in AMP.
However, some of the things on the page not being indexable include menu bars, header, footer, etc. which are all non-AMP compatible. Or, they use code that isn’t supported by the normal AMP indexing process that Google uses.
They were wondering if they need to create two versions of the page so there is some sort of backup, and if this process is something they need to do for AMP.
John answered that there is more than one issue at play. He joked that he would like to say “it depends” on this one. Anyway, he said that if it’s not a valid AMP page, they are unable to process it with the AMP-based cache.
This means that if you have two versions of a page – say it’s in AMP as well as traditional HTML – then they would just use the traditional HTML version of the page when indexing it. From an indexing perspective, this is just fine.
If you have a pure AMP site, where you have a setup that is just the AMP version, then they would still index the AMP page as an HTML page, even if it’s invalid. They just would not be able to process the page with the AMP cache because of the error in the AMP page.
Thus, they would not be able to give you the advantage of an AMP cache boost as a result.
This happens at approximately the 5:38 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
You’re You’re very popular over here as well, John? No, no, specifically here in this household. But outside of here, outside, people speak very highly of you. I have an AMP question. Our developer said that some of the pages and some pages are not being indexed because we’re using unsupported HTML tag attributes. But the page is only our blog, not our normal site that’s in AMP.
And so some of the things on the page, some of the normal menu bars, header footer, and that sort of stuff is in non-AMP, or uses some stuff that isn’t supported. So can that mean that the whole page won’t be collected? Or?
Or do you need to-is a best practice to create a different header and footer and different surrounding so that there’s two versions of the page?
One that’s, you’re in the same way that we do for React Java, we create two versions of the page so that there’s a kind of backup? Do you do that for AMP?
John 6:52
Um, I think they’re multiple things that kind of come together there. So I’d like to just say it depends. But anyway. Now, the thing is, if it’s not a valid AMP page, then we can’t process it with the AMP cache, and all of that.
Which means if you have a kind of a traditional HTML page and the amp version of that page, what would happen is we would just index the traditional HTML version of the page and use that. So from an indexing point of view, that would be fine.
If you have a pure AMP site, where you just have the AMP version, then we would still index the AMP page, essentially, as an HTML page, even if it’s invalid AMP. We just wouldn’t be able to process it with the AMP cache and all of that.
So essentially, it’s an error in the AMP page. And we won’t be able to give you kind of like those, the advantages of the AMP cache and all of that, but it wouldn’t affect the rest of search. It would still be indexable.
SEO Professional 2 8:09
Right. And would, okay, so wouldn’t get the AMP kind of boost, as it were, but it’s still a fairly quick page in general, if it’s built from…
John 8:20
…Yes.
SEO Professional 2 8:22
Okay. All right. So do some people therefore consider having the – when you say AMP page, it is literally the whole page, including everything on the page, whatever surrounding it, that everything.
John 8:34
Yeah. I think there, there’s some issues that are warnings on the AMP side. And those wouldn’t affect the AMP treatment. But some things are treated as errors. And we would say we wouldn’t be able to ensure the kind of default AMP cache because we don’t really know exactly what is happening there.
