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Google’s answer to Instant Articles now accounts for 7 percent of traffic to big US publishers

Google’s answer to Instant Articles now accounts for 7 percent of traffic to big US publishers

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Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages have been available for just a year now, but the platform — which can load some Google search results almost instantly — has already seen some impressive growth. According to an Adobe Analytics report released today, top publishers in the United States now see 7 percent of their traffic coming in through Google’s fast-loading AMP.

That rise is reflected in AMP’s usage statistics. Just between April and December alone last year, Adobe Analytics says, AMP saw its usage increase 405 percent. The presidential election saw an even bigger spike: traffic jumped 896 percent in November.

Election season was big for AMP

Google launched AMP last February after a four-month technical preview, the project initially being described as the company’s take on Facebook’s Instant Articles. Like Facebook, the company tied up deals with a number of publishers — including The Guardian, The New York Times, and The Verge’s parent company, Vox Media — so that major news sites would load almost instantaneously when viewed from Google search on mobile.

In October, some publishers indicated that they weren’t receiving as much ad money as they had hoped from the platform, but the data revealed today suggests that may have changed after a particularly busy end to 2016. In the meantime, Google has made a few tweaks to AMP to make it easier to use. This month, it added the ability to access and copy a link to the original version of the article, making it easier to reach the publisher’s full site or share the story elsewhere.