Google is tightening its AMP restrictions to prevent bait-and-switch content

All Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) pages will soon be required to contain information that’s almost identical to that of the canonical page they’re replicating, announced Google on Thursday. The change should prevent website owners from misusing the service to bait-and-switch readers.

Recently, a number of publications have been using AMP to serve so-called “teaser” pages to their readers, before redirecting them to an ad-riddled version—and that isn’t isn’t the “streamlined” user experience Big G was hoping to provide when it released the AMP platform back in 2016.

“AMP was introduced to improve the performance of the web and deliver a fast, consistent content consumption experience,” writes Google in a post on its Webmaster blog. “In keeping with this goal, we’ll be enforcing the requirement of close parity between AMP and canonical page.”

The change in policy is set to be introduced in February, 2018.