If you are using AMP, there is a high probability of your metrics being wrong because of how AMP works. You can watch the video-recording of the presentation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vetdqSh1uhI&t=4s

1. WHY YOUR ANALYTICS TOOL
MAY BE LYING TO YOU
ABOUT AMP 1

2. HELLO!
I am Christian Oliveira
- Freelance Technical SEO consultant and Digital Nomad
- Former Product Manager of the AMP implementation on
elmundo.es, marca.com, expansion.com (big news websites in
Spain)
2

3. THE BAD NEWS
3

4. Your AMP Analytics data is lying to you!
Because of how AMP is built, a single user can be
counted as more than 4 different users on the
same browser
4

5. THE GOOD NEWS
5

6. After 18 months, Google developed a solution!
You cannot fix data retroactively, but if you opt in to
Google’s solution your new data will be much more
accurate
6

7. Let’s do a tour of the AMP project milestones
regarding Analytics
7

8. October 2015
Google announces the AMP project 1 8

9. October 2015: Google announces the AMP project
A project for news websites, to create really fast
pages and appear on the “Top News”
carrousel, but open to other Google products in
the future
https://googleblog.blogspot.pt/2015/10/introducing-accelerated-mobile-pages.html
9

10. October 2015: Google announces the AMP project
Big brands like The Guardian, The New York
Times, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. were already in,
supporting/working on the project.
Google encourage all the news websites to
implement AMP, and participate in the project.
They also told us that the Top Stories carrousel
will be showing only AMP content next year.
https://googleblog.blogspot.pt/2015/10/introducing-accelerated-mobile-pages.html
10

11. January 2016
Google Analytics announces support for AMP pages 211

12. January 2016: Google Analytics announces support for AMP pages
No Google Analytics integration was
completely confirmed until one month
before of the launch.
Publishers were running against the
clock to get everything ready for the
launch, and also the AMP team!
https://analytics.googleblog.com/2016/01/announcing-ga-support-for-accelerated.html
12

13. February 2016
Google launches the first AMP integration globally 313

14. February 2016: Google launches the first AMP integration globally
https://www.theguardian.com/membership/2016/feb/24/todays-release-of-accelerated-mobile-pages-amp
Only for news sites, only for the “Top stories”
box.
Mix of AMP and non-AMP results, but carrousel
only shows AMP results.
You can swipe between news
14

15. September 2016
Google substitutes normal URLs by AMP URLs on organic
mobile results
415

16. September 2016: Google substitutes normal URLs by AMP URLs
on organic mobile results
https://blog.google/products/search/search-results-are-officially-ampd/
Big change
If you implement AMP on all your URLs, your
mobile SEO traffic will all land on AMP pages.
Open to all websites
Doesn’t affect rankings
16

17. November 2016
Simo Ahava writes publicly about the Analytics bug for
the first time
517

18. Metrics are being inflated because of how
AMP works
He provides a solution that works on most
of the cases, but it’s technically complex.
November 2016: Simo Ahava writes publicly about the Analytics
bug for the first time
https://www.simoahava.com/analytics/google-analytics-client-id-amp-pages/
18

19. March 2017
I publish a detailed blog post about the bug, and it gets a
lot of press
619

20. March 2017: I publish a detailed blog post about the bug, and it
gets a lot of press
https://www.christianoliveira.com/blog/en/web-analytics/why-the-bounce-rate-of-my-amp-pages-is-so-high/
20

21. March 2017: I publish a detailed blog post about the bug, and it
gets a lot of press
https://www.christianoliveira.com/blog/en/web-analytics/why-the-bounce-rate-of-my-amp-pages-is-so-high/
21

22. March 2017: Same user, same browser = 5 different cookies
https://www.christianoliveira.com/blog/en/web-analytics/why-the-bounce-rate-of-my-amp-pages-is-so-high/
22

23. March 2017: Google is aware of the problem and acknowledge it
https://twitter.com/cramforce/status/837289470273683457 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13838756 /
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/amp-analytics/client-id
23

24. May 2017
Google publishes their first fix to the analytics bug,
solving the problem for one of the scenarios
724

25. May 2017: Google publish their first fix to the analytics bug,
solving the problem for one of the scenarios
https://analytics.googleblog.com/2017/05/google-analytics-is-enhancing-support.html
Implemented automatically via the
amp-analytics JS library. No action required
by webmasters
It only solves the problem between AMP
and non-AMP pages served on your
domain, not the most common problem
(pages served by Google and their cache)
25

26. May 2017: Google publish their first fix to the analytics bug,
solving the problem for one of the scenarios
https://www.christianoliveira.com/blog/en/web-analytics/why-the-bounce-rate-of-my-amp-pages-is-so-high/
26

27. May 2017: Google publish their first fix to the analytics bug,
solving the problem for one of the scenarios
https://www.christianoliveira.com/blog/en/web-analytics/why-the-bounce-rate-of-my-amp-pages-is-so-high/
27

28. September 2017
Google publishes another fix to solve the problem on the
main scenario (Google’s cache), only for Google.com
828

29. September 2017: Google publishes another fix to solve the problem on
the main scenario (Google’s cache), but only for Google.com
https://analytics.googleblog.com/2017/09/google-analytics-is-enhancing-support-for-amp-on-cache.html
Webmasters need to make changes on
both their AMP and non-AMP pages
Working only for the google.com
domain
Solves the problem for the main
scenario
29

30. September 2017: Google publishes another fix to solve the problem on
the main scenario (Google’s cache), but only for Google.com
https://analytics.googleblog.com/2017/09/google-analytics-is-enhancing-support-for-amp-on-cache.html
30

31. September 2017: Google publishes another fix to solve the problem on
the main scenario (Google’s cache), but only for Google.com
https://analytics.googleblog.com/2017/09/google-analytics-is-enhancing-support-for-amp-on-cache.html
31

32. October 2017
Google’s solution now works for all google domains 932

33. October 2017: Google’s solution now works for all google domains
https://analytics.googleblog.com/2017/09/google-analytics-is-enhancing-support-for-amp-on-cache.html
33

34. October 2017: Google’s solution now works for all google domains
https://analytics.googleblog.com/2017/09/google-analytics-is-enhancing-support-for-amp-on-cache.html
34

35. October 2017: Google’s solution now works for all google domains
https://analytics.googleblog.com/2017/09/google-analytics-is-enhancing-support-for-amp-on-cache.html
35

36. SO...
◉ An official solution that (mostly) solves the problem exists
since October 2017
◉ The solution is not retroactive (your old data remains messy)
◉ If you use AMP, unless you tried to implement a solution on
your own, your data is inaccurate, and you should
implement the solution now.
36

37. 37
https://www.ampproject.org/latest/blog/amp-two-years-of-user-first-webpages/

38. THE SOLUTION
38

39. You need to make changes on both your AMP pages and your
non-AMP pages in order to fix the problem
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/7486764?hl=en
AMP pages non-AMP pages
39

40. And… Does it REALLY work?
40

41. And… Does it work?
41
Mostly, YES

42. Case 1
BUT There are some edge cases where it doesn’t
42

43. Case 1
Visits to AMP’s CDN (e.g:
randomtrip-es.cdn.ampproject.com) will still
count as different users. This may change in
the future.
For example LinkedIn sends users there from
their mobile app
BUT There are some edge cases where it doesn’t
43

44. Case 1
BUT There are some edge cases where it doesn’t
44

45. BUT There are some edge cases where it doesn’t
45
Case 2
New visitors that first visit the “normal”
website and then the Google’s cache
AMP page, will be 2 users until they
visit the “normal” website again
This is because the “normal” page is the
one in charge of checking it there is a
cookie generated by Google’s AMP cache
for this domain.

46. BUT There are some edge cases where it doesn’t
Case 2
New visitors that first visit the “normal”
website and then the Google’s cache
AMP page, will be 2 users until they
visit the “normal” website again
This is because the “normal” page is the
one in charge of checking it there is a
cookie generated by Google’s AMP cache
for this domain.
46

47. BUT There are some edge cases where it doesn’t
Case 2
New visitors that first visit the “normal”
website and then the Google’s cache
AMP page, will be 2 users until they
visit the “normal” website again
This is because the “normal” page is the
one in charge of checking it there is a
cookie generated by Google’s AMP cache
for this domain.
47

48. BUT There are some edge cases where it doesn’t
Case 3
New visitors that do this sequence in less
than an hour:
◉ Normal page
◉ Google’s AMP cache page
◉ Normal page
Will be counted as 2 visitors for an hour or
until they click on a “normal” link inside
the Google’s AMP cache page.
48

49. BUT There are some edge cases where it doesn’t
Case 3
This is because, to avoid unnecessary
requests, if the normal websites does not
find an AMP client id, does not try again
for an hour.
Malte from Google says it may get down
the time to 30 minutes.
On the other side, if a visit come from the
cache (referrer xxx.cdn.ampproject.org)
a check to see if the cookie exists is
forced.
49

50. Conclusion
◉ Always be careful with data.
◉ If you are using AMP, opt-in for the solution now.
◉ Be really careful with your conclusions when looking at data
where AMP is involved
◉ Be prepared to still have a small percentage of error on your
data.
◉ If you have any doubts, or find any other bug, reach Malte Ubl
(https://twitter.com/cramforce) or AMPhtml
(https://twitter.com/AMPhtml) on Twitter
50

51. THANKS!
Any questions?
You can find me at
@christian_wilde / christianoliveirausal@gmail.com /
christianoliveira.com
51