Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) was once a practical requirement for appearing in Top Stories and gaining mobile search advantages. Since Google removed AMP as a requirement for Top Stories in 2021 and page experience became a standard ranking signal, maintaining a separate AMP version of your site is no longer necessary for most publishers. If you are still running AMP alongside your regular site, you are maintaining a parallel codebase for diminishing returns. Here is how to migrate away safely.
Why Migrate Away from AMP
AMP maintenance has real costs: a separate codebase to update, AMP-specific bugs to fix, limited design and functionality options, and ongoing compatibility testing. The benefits that motivated AMP adoption — Top Stories eligibility and a mobile ranking boost — are now available to any page that meets Core Web Vitals thresholds. If your regular pages perform well on mobile, AMP provides no additional SEO benefit.
- Reduced maintenance burden: one codebase instead of two
- Full design and functionality: no longer constrained by AMP's limited component library
- Better analytics: standard pages support full JavaScript tracking without AMP restrictions
- Simpler URL structure: eliminate /amp/ URLs and consolidation complexity
- Faster development: new features deploy to one version, not two
Pre-Migration Checklist
Before removing AMP, ensure your regular pages are ready to absorb the traffic. Your non-AMP pages must pass Core Web Vitals thresholds — particularly LCP, FID/INP, and CLS. Mobile usability must be excelCLSt. Page speed should match or exceed your AMP pages' performance. Run a side-by-side performance comparison to verify readiness.
Do not migrate away from AMP if your non-AMP pages are significantly slower or have poor Core Web Vitals scores. You may lose the mobile performance advantage that AMP was providing. Fix your regular page performance first, then migrate.
Migration Steps
- Verify non-AMP pages meet Core Web Vitals thresholds using PageSpeed Insights and CrUX data
- Remove the amphtml link element from your non-AMP pages that currently point to AMP versions
- Set up 301 redirects from AMP URLs to their corresponding non-AMP versions
- Update your XML sitemap to include only non-AMP URLs
- Remove AMP-specific canonical tags that pointed to non-AMP versions
- Monitor Search Console for indexing issues during the transition period
- Remove AMP pages from your server after Google has fully processed the redirects (4-8 weeks)
- Clean up any AMP-specific structured data, CSS, or JavaScript from your codebase
Handling the Redirect Period
Keep AMP URLs redirecting to non-AMP versions for at least three to six months after migration. External sites, social media shares, and cached results may still point to AMP URLs. During the redirect period, monitor for 404 errors on AMP URLs that were missed in the redirect mapping. Check your Google News sitemap specifically if you are a publisher — News has specific requirements for URL changes.
Monitoring Post-Migration
Monitor organic traffic, impressions, and Top Stories appearances closely for four to eight weeks after migration. Some traffic fluctuation is normal as Google reprocesses your pages. If you see a significant sustained drop, check whether your non-AMP pages are properly indexed, whether Core Web Vitals have regressed, and whether redirect mappings are complete.
In our experience, publishers who migrate away from AMP with well-optimized non-AMP pages see no traffic loss. Several have actually seen traffic gains because their regular pages offer richer content and better user engagement than the constrained AMP versions did.
When to Keep AMP
There are limited cases where keeping AMP makes sense. If your regular pages cannot meet Core Web Vitals thresholds due to heavy third-party scripts or legacy infrastructure, AMP may still provide a performance advantage worth maintaining. Email-based AMP (AMP for Email) is a separate technology that remains useful for interactive email experiences and is unaffected by web AMP deprecation.
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