How to Properly Disable Google AMP in WordPress (2023 Guide)
When Google first launched Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) in 2015, the technology showed a lot of promise. AMP is an open source initiative designed to help web pages load faster on mobile devices, in order to improve the user experience and keep impatient visitors from bouncing.
In the early days, many WordPress site owners rushed to implement AMP, enticed by Google‘s promises that it would boost mobile search rankings and make their content more visible in search results. Usage grew rapidly, reaching over 31 million domains by 2017.
However, in the years since, a growing number of publishers have soured on AMP. While AMP can indeed make pages load very quickly, it also imposes strict limitations on functionality and monetization. Many find that after implementing AMP, their conversion rates and revenue drop significantly.
As a result, more and more WordPress sites are choosing to disable AMP entirely. Even major publishers like Vox Media have moved away from the technology. If you‘re considering disabling AMP on your own site, this in-depth guide will walk you through the process to ensure you do it correctly and avoid any negative impacts on your search rankings or traffic.
Why Disable Google AMP in WordPress?
There are a number of compelling reasons why you may want to disable AMP in WordPress:
- Reduced ad revenue and conversions
One of the biggest drawbacks of AMP is that it strictly limits the types of ads, popups, and lead capture forms you can use. Many common ad formats are not allowed, and interstitials and signup boxes are restricted.
As a result, many publishers experience a significant drop in ad revenue after implementing AMP. Chartbeat analyzed traffic to 159 AMP-enabled sites and found that while visitors spent 35% more time on AMP pages vs the standard mobile web, publishers actually earned 39% less revenue per page.
AMP also makes it harder to convert visitors into subscribers or customers, since many interactive elements and opt-in forms get stripped out. If monetization and conversions are important to your business model, AMP might be doing more harm than good.
- Lower engagement and repeat traffic
Another issue with AMP is that it makes your content look very generic. All AMP pages basically look the same, with key branding elements and navigation often hidden away.
This means visitors may not even realize they are on your website. There‘s no easy way for them to explore your other content or sign up for your email list. The prominent "X" button at the top of AMP pages encourages people to return to Google search results rather than engaging further.
Many publishers have found that AMP has a negative effect on important user engagement metrics like pages per session, time on site, and return visits. If building a loyal audience is a priority, AMP could be counterproductive.
- Lack of support in Google Analytics 4
When Google originally launched AMP, it was well supported in the Universal Analytics version of Google Analytics that most sites used. However, Universal Analytics will be deprecated in 2023 and eventually shut down in 2024.
The new version, Google Analytics 4 (GA4), does not currently support AMP and Google has not indicated if or when it will be supported. Without analytics support, it becomes very difficult to track the performance of your AMP pages and evaluate if AMP is helping or hurting your site metrics.
- AMP is no longer a search ranking factor
Initially, one of the main benefits of AMP was that Google gave AMP pages special treatment, often displaying them prominently at the top of mobile search results. This led many to believe that AMP was a direct search ranking factor.
However, Google has since clarified that AMP itself is not used as a ranking signal. Rather, speed and page experience are the key factors. You can achieve fast load times and good Core Web Vitals scores without using AMP.
In fact, some SEO experts now believe that well-optimized responsive websites can actually outperform AMP pages in the search results. Relying solely on AMP for SEO is no longer a good strategy.
- It adds complexity to your WordPress site
Implementing AMP adds a whole extra layer of complexity to your WordPress site. You need to maintain separate AMP versions of all your content, and validate that your AMP markup meets Google‘s strict requirements. This can slow down your publishing workflow.
Many WordPress themes and plugins also have compatibility issues with AMP, which can lead to frustrating errors or cause key functionality to break. Disabling AMP can simplify your tech stack and eliminate the need to debug yet another system.
With all these potential issues, it‘s no wonder that more and more WordPress sites are choosing to ditch AMP. For most publishers, the drawbacks now outweigh the benefits in this stage of the technology‘s maturity.
So how can you disable AMP on your WordPress site the right way? Follow the steps below.
How to Disable Google AMP in WordPress
- Deactivate and delete your AMP plugin
The first step is to deactivate and delete the WordPress plugin you are using to implement AMP. Some of the most common ones include:
- AMP for WP
- AMP by Automattic
- Accelerated Mobile Pages
- Glue for Yoast SEO & AMP
- WP AMP
In your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins. Find your AMP plugin in the list, and click "Deactivate". Then click "Delete" to remove it completely.
Don‘t skip this step, even if you plan to redirect your AMP pages to the canonical version (see next section). Leaving an inactive AMP plugin on your site can still cause conflicts or slow down your site. It‘s best to remove it entirely.
- Redirect AMP pages to the canonical URL
Deactivating the plugin will remove the AMP versions of your posts from being accessible to visitors. However, Google and other search engines may still have those AMP pages indexed.
That means someone could click on an AMP URL in the search results and land on a "404 not found" error page, since the AMP version no longer exists. That‘s a poor user experience that could also hurt your search rankings.
To prevent this, you need to implement 301 redirects that automatically send visitors from each AMP URL to the main canonical URL for that post or page.
There are two ways to set up AMP to canonical redirects in WordPress:
Method 1: Use the Redirection plugin
The easiest way is to use the free Redirection plugin. With over 2 million active installations, it‘s one of the most popular redirect managers for WordPress.
Install and activate the plugin, then go to Tools > Redirection to access the redirect dashboard.
In the "Source URL" field, enter /(.*)\/amp and choose "Regex" from the dropdown menu.
In the "Target URL" field, enter https://yoursite.com/$1, replacing "yoursite.com" with your own domain name.
Set the HTTP code to "301 – Permanent Redirect". Click Add Redirect to save.
Now, any URL on your site that ends in /amp will automatically redirect to the non-AMP version. The $1 is a placeholder that tells the redirect to preserve the rest of the original URL.
For example:
- yoursite.com/hello-world/amp redirects to yoursite.com/hello-world
- yoursite.com/category/example/amp redirects to yoursite.com/category/example
And so on. This regex redirect will handle all AMP to canonical redirects with a single rule.
Method 2: Edit your .htaccess file
If you prefer not to use a plugin, you can manually implement AMP redirects in Apache by editing your WordPress .htaccess file.
Connect to your site via FTP or cPanel File Manager, and download a copy of the .htaccess file to your computer as a backup.
Open the original .htaccess file and add the following code snippet at the end:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (.+)/amp/?$
RewriteRule ^ %1 [L,R=301]
Save the changes and re-upload the .htaccess file to your server.
This code does essentially the same thing as the Redirection plugin method – any URL ending in /amp will get redirected to the regular version of the page.
However, we generally recommend the plugin approach for most users, as you‘re less likely to break something. Even a small mistake in your .htaccess file can take down your whole site.
- Submit an updated XML sitemap
Every time you make significant changes to your site structure or URLs, it‘s a good idea to submit an updated sitemap to Google Search Console. This helps Google re-crawl your site and index the changes faster.
To generate a fresh sitemap after disabling AMP:
- Install and activate the free Yoast SEO plugin (if you haven‘t already)
- Go to SEO > General > Features and toggle the XML sitemaps switch to "On"
- Click the "?" link next to XML sitemaps to view your sitemap index URL (usually yoursite.com/sitemap_index.xml)
- Go to Google Search Console > Sitemaps and enter your sitemap URL
- Click Submit
Your new non-AMP URLs should start appearing in the Google search results within a few days. You can also request indexing for individual pages using the URL Inspection tool.
- Check Google Analytics for traffic changes
Finally, keep a close eye on your Google Analytics data in the days and weeks after disabling AMP. Specifically, look for any changes to your organic search traffic, bounce rate, time on page, or conversion metrics.
If the redirect is working properly, you should see search traffic shift from your old AMP URLs to the new canonical URLs with no major drop-off.
However, it‘s normal to see some fluctuations at first as Google re-indexes your pages and adjusts your rankings. Don‘t panic if traffic dips a bit initially – it should stabilize and recover as long as you‘ve followed the rest of the steps correctly.
If you notice any pages that are getting large amounts of 404 errors in Search Console, that means the redirect isn‘t working for those URLs. In that case, you may need to troubleshoot your redirect rules or recreate the AMP URL structure on your site.
Frequently Asked Questions
What happens if I just deactivate the AMP plugin without redirecting?
We strongly recommend setting up redirects from your old AMP pages to the canonical version, otherwise you will have a large number of 404 errors which can negatively impact your search rankings and traffic. However, if you don‘t care about preserving your search traffic and just want to quickly disable AMP, you can skip the redirect step. Keep in mind this will almost certainly result in some traffic and ranking losses.
Will disabling AMP hurt my search rankings?
No, Google has stated that AMP is not a ranking factor. As long as you redirect your old AMP URLs and maintain fast page load times, you should not see any long-term negative impact on your rankings. In fact, some have found that improving their mobile user experience and engagement after disabling AMP can actually improve rankings and traffic.
My site is slow after disabling AMP. What can I do?
There are plenty of other ways to optimize your WordPress site for speed and performance without using AMP:
- Use a fast, lightweight theme optimized for performance
- Serve images in next-gen formats like WebP
- Minimize render-blocking CSS and JavaScript in above-the-fold content
- Use browser caching and a CDN
- Compress and minify your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files
- Enable Gzip compression on your server
- Optimize your database and remove unused plugins
For more tips, see our complete guide to speeding up your WordPress site. Implementing AMP is not the only (or even the best) way to achieve fast load times.
I‘m using an AMP-first theme or plugin. Can I still disable AMP?
If you‘re using a theme like AMP for WP that uses AMP as its primary site framework, disabling AMP may cause your site to break. Reach out to the developer for guidance before proceeding. You will likely need to migrate to a different theme to move away from AMP.
Will disabling AMP affect my Core Web Vitals scores?
Possibly, but not necessarily. AMP is one way to achieve good Core Web Vitals scores, but it‘s not the only way. If you follow other performance best practices and maintain fast load times, you can still get good scores without AMP. Use Google‘s PageSpeed Insights tool to test your pages and get recommendations for improvement.
The Verdict on AMP for WordPress Publishers
AMP adoption has slowed considerably since the early hype wore off and publishers started grappling with the real-world tradeoffs of the technology. While AMP can still be useful in certain contexts, for most WordPress publishers it‘s no longer worth the added complexity and loss of flexibility.
If you do decide to disable AMP, we hope this guide has given you a clear roadmap to do so safely and correctly. By setting up proper redirects and monitoring your analytics, you can move away from AMP with minimal disruption to your search rankings and traffic.
Ultimately, the key to search engine success is publishing great content and providing a stellar user experience – with or without AMP. Focus on the fundamentals, and the rest will fall into place.
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