AMP in 2026: What's Left of It and Do You Still Need It

In 2016, Google launched Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) — a restricted subset of HTML that promised instant article loading on mobile devices. At its peak popularity (2018–2020), websites were mass-producing AMP versions of their content, and news publishers were migrating their entire operations to AMP. By 2026, almost nobody is doing this anymore. In this article, we break down what happened, whether AMP is still relevant today, and what to do about any old AMP pages you still have on your site.

A Brief History of AMP

2016: Google launches the project. The idea — a standardised subset of HTML with preloading via Google's CDN, delivering fast mobile pages.

2017–2018: The Top Stories carousel in Google Search displays predominantly AMP pages. This forces major publishers to adopt AMP — otherwise they fall out of the high-visibility carousel positions.

2019: Antitrust investigations begin scrutinising AMP as a vehicle for Google to impose its own standard. Criticism mounts.

2021: Google announces that AMP is no longer required to appear in Top Stories. It opens access to all sites that meet Core Web Vitals thresholds.

2022–2024: A mass exodus from AMP. Major publishers (Washington Post, New York Times, Vox Media) remove their AMP versions. Maintaining two versions of every page is too costly, and there are no longer any benefits to justify it.

2026: AMP is formally alive but practically dead. Google continues to index it, but offers no ranking advantages. Top Stories has long been showing ordinary mobile-friendly pages.

Do Search Engines Still Support AMP?

Google: Technically, yes. It indexes AMP pages and may serve them in search results. But there are no advantages — a regular mobile-friendly page with strong Core Web Vitals ranks just as well as an AMP variant.

Yandex: Never formally supported AMP. Yandex Turbo Pages are their own alternative — technically similar but not compatible.

Bing, DuckDuckGo: No special AMP support either.

In short, AMP in 2026 is technology for technology's sake. Search engines offer no bonuses for it, and users can't tell the difference between an AMP page and a regular one — as long as the regular one is fast.

Should You Build AMP Pages Today?

No, except in very narrow cases.

When you don't need it:

A corporate services website
E-commerce
An informational portal with good mobile UX
Any site whose Core Web Vitals are already in the green

A modern mobile-friendly site with properly optimised HTML/CSS/JS performs no slower than AMP — and is often faster, since AMP adds the overhead of its own framework (~70 KB).

When it might theoretically make sense:

If you have a large legacy site with thousands of AMP pages and removing them right now is impractical — leave them, let them run
If your CMS was originally set up for AMP and rebuilding costs more than maintaining — continue
In niches where Top Stories is critical (news), and your transition away from AMP is still in progress

What to Do with Old AMP Pages

If your site has <link rel="amphtml" href="/amp/..."> meta tags and live AMP versions, you have a few options.

Option 1: Leave them as-is

The simplest path. AMP versions work, don't interfere, and won't be indexed as duplicates (because there's a canonical pointing to the main version). You can do nothing.

Downside: you continue maintaining a second version of every page whenever changes are made. Double the work.

Option 2: Remove AMP entirely

The correct procedure:

Remove <link rel="amphtml"> meta tags from canonical pages
Set up 301 redirects from old AMP URLs to their canonical versions
Wait 1–2 months for search engines to recrawl and drop the AMP variants
Once traffic to AMP pages has fallen to zero — physically delete them

We don't recommend deleting abruptly (a simple rm -rf amp/) — users and search engines with AMP URLs cached will hit 404s.

Option 3: Convert AMP pages to standard pages

If the content on an AMP page is unique and valuable (not a duplicate of the canonical), it can be converted into a regular page:

Replace AMP-specific tags (<amp-img>, <amp-iframe> → standard equivalents)
Move styles from inline into a regular <link> stylesheet
Remove AMP HTML restrictions
Set a 301 from the old AMP URL to the new standard page

This takes longer, but gives you content pages that are independent of the AMP standard.

What About Yandex Turbo Pages?

Turbo Pages are Yandex's equivalent of AMP, launched in 2017. They too have lost relevance in 2024–2025. Yandex continues to support them, but isn't actively promoting the feature. The Turbo block has moved away from top positions in search results.

The logic is the same: if your site is fast according to Core Web Vitals, Turbo doesn't provide a meaningful advantage. If it's slow — it's better to speed up the site itself than to build a Turbo version.

In 2026, creating new Turbo Pages is not recommended.

What to Use Instead of AMP

"Modern alternatives":

PWA (Progressive Web App) — provides offline mode, push notifications, and home screen installation. This is a different category, not for every site, but if you need an app-like experience, PWA is far more powerful than AMP.
Server-side rendering via modern frameworks (Next.js, Nuxt, Astro). Delivers a fast first paint without the overhead of the AMP framework.
Static site generation for content — static HTML served directly from a CDN. Faster than AMP and free of dependencies.
Optimised images via WebP/AVIF and lazy-loading — delivers a mobile-friendly UX without any special format requirements.

If You Still Have AMP Pages

Audit checklist:

Open Google Search Console → Enhancements → AMP. It will show all valid AMP pages.
Open Coverage. How many AMP pages are indexed?
Check the Performance report filtered by Mobile / Desktop. How much traffic comes to AMP URLs vs. standard ones?

If AMP delivers less than 5% of traffic — begin phasing it out strategically. If it accounts for 20%+ — hold off for now and migrate gradually.

Summary

AMP in 2026 is an outdated technology. It's supported in name, offers no benefits, and demands double the maintenance effort. Don't build new sites on AMP. For existing AMP pages — migrate them gradually to standard HTML with proper Core Web Vitals optimisation.

Want a migration plan away from AMP, or just a performance audit? Get in touch. Free, within 2 business days.