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Google’s John Mueller, recently explained the practices of choosing URL structure for AMP Pages, during Google Webmaster Central Hangout.
John Mueller recommends site owners to choose the URL structure that works best for a longer period of time.
Here is the question that was introduced by a site owner:
“I was wondering if there’s any best practice for the URL structure of AMP pages. If you use a sub-domain or a folder in the upper level, you can have a better possibility for analyzing in different tools.
But I was wondering if there’s any benefit for Google if you put your AMP pages under the root domain instead of a sub-domain or parameters.”
This is what Mueller had to say in response:
“From Google’s point of view, I think the only criteria that is critical for AMP pages is that it has to be on the same domain.
So if you have it in the subdomain or a sub-directory, all of that is perfectly fine.
In general, with these kind of related pages, I would recommend doing them in a way that works best for you. So something where it’s easy for you to track, it’s easy for you to monitor, it’s easy for you to maintain that setup. So if it works well for your CMS, for example, or if it works well for your server setup then that’s a good choice.
I wouldn’t worry about is there any kind of Google tweak that makes a big difference with regards to these alternate URLs.
The other thing I would watch out for with these alternate URLs is that you don’t change the patterns too often.
So, ideally, if you pick something like a sub-directory or a sub-domain then try to keep that for as long as you can.
It’s not quite the same as if you change your primary URLs with regards to search, but any time you change URLs in general, then we kind of have to reprocess that.
If you’re changing the alternate URLs that are associated with every page on your site, then that means we have to process a lot of URLs to kind of understand that new setup.
So pick a sub-domain, or sub-directory, or parameters if you want. Whatever works best for you. And try to keep that setup, ideally, for the long run.”
Key Learnings
- All AMP pages should be in the same domain i.e. either all the pages should be in your subdomain or all the pages should be in a subdirectory of the website
- The site owner should choose an AMP URL structure which would be:
- Easily tracked
- Easily monitored
- Easily maintained
- Cooperate with your CMS
- Cooperate with your server
- Google does not recommend changing the URL structure too often because it has to reprocess all the URLs which can impact rankings.
- Choose a URL structure and keep it as long as possible.
Take a look at what John Mueller has to say about the URL structure of AMP pages in this Youtube video.
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