AI Summary
This WompMobile case study documents how George at ASDA used AMP to make its mobile shopping pages faster and reported gains in performance and conversion. The important context for readers today is what has changed since: Google no longer requires AMP for Top Stories or for ranking, so the durable lesson is speed, which you can now achieve with a fast responsive site and strong Core Web Vitals.
- AMP delivered speed through a strict HTML format, a ban on custom JavaScript, and delivery from a cached CDN.
- The George at ASDA case study reports mobile performance and conversion gains from adopting AMP.
- Since the 2021 Page Experience update, Top Stories no longer requires AMP and Core Web Vitals are the signal.
- You can reach the same speed today with a fast responsive build, so new AMP projects are rarely worth it.
WompMobile was an AMP development agency, and this case study covers its work making the mobile experience for George, the clothing brand at ASDA, dramatically faster using AMP. The results it reports are a snapshot of a moment when AMP was the fastest route to mobile speed and to visibility in Google mobile features. This page keeps the source and adds practitioner context, including the part that matters most now: how the SEO value of AMP has changed.
What AMP actually was
AMP, short for Accelerated Mobile Pages, was a stripped down way to build web pages that loaded almost instantly on mobile. It reached that speed through hard constraints. Pages had to be written in a restricted AMP HTML format, author written JavaScript was not allowed, images had to use the special amp-img component, and the CSS budget was capped. In exchange, pages were served from a cached AMP CDN and could be preloaded from the search results, so they appeared to open the instant a user tapped. For a mobile shopping experience like George at ASDA, where every extra second of load time costs conversions, that speed was the whole point, and the case study reports gains in both performance and conversion.
Why AMP mattered for SEO at the time
Speed was only half the appeal. For several years AMP was effectively the ticket into the Top Stories carousel on mobile search, a high visibility placement, and AMP pages carried a small lightning icon that signaled speed to users. That combination, faster pages plus preferential placement, is why large retailers and publishers invested in AMP builds even though maintaining a parallel AMP version of every page was extra work.
AMP the AMP way versus the modern way
The goals AMP chased are still the right goals. What changed is that you no longer need AMP to reach them. The table compares the AMP approach with how you would hit the same targets today.
| Goal | The AMP way | The modern way |
|---|---|---|
| Fast first load | Restricted AMP HTML and CDN cache | Lean responsive HTML and a good CDN |
| Controlled scripts | No author JavaScript at all | Trim and defer scripts, audit third parties |
| Efficient images | The amp-img component | Responsive images with width, height, and lazy loading |
| Top Stories eligibility | Required an AMP version | Open to any page that meets the guidelines |
| Measured quality | Implicit in the AMP format | Core Web Vitals thresholds you can track |
What has changed since this case study
This is the section to read if you are deciding whether to build AMP today. In 2021 Google rolled out the Page Experience update and made two changes that reset the value of AMP. First, Top Stories stopped requiring AMP, so a fast non AMP page became eligible for the same placement. Second, Google introduced Core Web Vitals as ranking signals, giving every page a measurable speed and stability target regardless of whether it used AMP. The lightning icon was retired, and Google quietly stepped back from promoting AMP.
The practical consequence is that maintaining a separate AMP version is now overhead most sites do not need. Many retailers and publishers removed AMP after 2021 and put that effort into making their main responsive pages fast enough to pass Core Web Vitals. The metrics themselves have kept evolving too: in 2024 Interaction to Next Paint replaced First Input Delay as the responsiveness metric in Core Web Vitals, so the current targets are Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint, and Cumulative Layout Shift.
None of this makes the George at ASDA result wrong. It shows that speed drives mobile conversions, which is as true now as it was then. The difference is the delivery mechanism. If you are starting today, invest in a fast responsive build and measurable Core Web Vitals rather than a parallel AMP stack. For related performance and structure guidance, see our website architecture case studies, the note on server side rendering and SEO, and the wider case study library.
Frequently asked questions
Is AMP still worth it for SEO in the 2020s?
For most sites, no. Since the 2021 Page Experience update, Top Stories no longer requires AMP and Core Web Vitals decide ranking, so a fast responsive page competes on equal terms. Building and maintaining a separate AMP version is overhead that rarely pays off for new projects.
Does AMP help you rank in Google?
AMP is not a ranking factor on its own, and it never was. Its SEO value came from speed and from being required for Top Stories. Now that Top Stories accepts non AMP pages and Core Web Vitals measure speed directly, a fast standard page can achieve the same outcomes.
What did the George at ASDA AMP case study show?
The WompMobile case study reports that George at ASDA used AMP to make its mobile shopping pages much faster and saw gains in performance and conversion. The takeaway that still holds is that faster mobile pages improve conversion. The delivery method has since shifted from AMP to fast responsive pages.
Do I need AMP to appear in Top Stories?
No. Google announced that Top Stories would no longer require AMP, and that change took effect with the Page Experience update in 2021. Any page that meets Google news and content guidelines can now appear, whether or not it uses AMP.
What replaced AMP for site speed?
Core Web Vitals replaced AMP as the way Google measures page experience. The current metrics are Largest Contentful Paint for loading, Interaction to Next Paint for responsiveness, and Cumulative Layout Shift for visual stability. You optimize your normal responsive pages to pass these thresholds.
Should I remove AMP from my existing site?
It depends on the maintenance cost. If your AMP pages still perform and are cheap to keep, there is no urgency to remove them. If they add complexity or duplicate work, many sites have retired AMP and focused on making their main pages fast enough to pass Core Web Vitals instead.
Source: https://www.wompmobile.com/amp-case-study-george-asda/
Claude Vincent is a technical SEO consultant focused on crawlability, rendering, and AI-search visibility. He writes the field guides and case studies at SEO ProCheck, with a bias toward the durable, unglamorous work that decides whether search engines and AI answer engines can actually read and cite a site.
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