Are you wondering why your traffic just can’t seem to pick up no matter how much you blog?
Did your traffic suddenly come to a standstill or even drop some after installing the AMP (accelerated mobile pages) plugin?
Most of you have probably felt like you were on a treadmill for a very long time and little did you know that the AMP plugin is the cause of all the madness.
For me, I also did some website analysis and found out that I was getting hit with “duplicate content” that I couldn’t seem to understand.
I knew I deleted some images and changed some categories but I figured that if I “mark it as fixed”, Google will know that there isn’t anything wrong with my site and they won’t show me that warning again.
Wrong!
Day after day, week after week, I would continue to see so many different errors popup on my site and I would even see some of my content and images getting de-indexed.
My site’s traffic did drop but I was still getting some and blamed it on the theme change I did.
Time went on and I figured things would be better but back came the de-indexing, error messages, and most especially the poor rankings and that feeling of being on a treadmill.
This has happened to myself and many others and we all shared the same heartache and suffering that our business took, thanks to the lack of knowledge that came with such a simple plugin.
First things first, uninstalling the AMP plugin is not where it stops.
What AMP is and What it is Supposed to Do
AMP has been around for quite some time now and a lot of newer site owners are being told to use the plugin so it could help mobile users access your site a lot easier with a lot less loading going on just to get them to view your pages.
Just like a lot of you, I downloaded and activated AMP thinking I needed to conform with Google’s ways or I would lose rankings and never get ranked the way I should be getting ranked.
So was that a good thing or a bad thing?
Well, let’s just say that I used this plugin over a year ago and I am only now realizing that I am still getting haunted by the “mistake” I made thanks to my fear of falling out of line with what Google thinks.
Let me also say that my bad experience with the plugin is not the same across the board, so not everyone has dealt with the nightmare that AMP has caused with my site.
For those of you who are still using AMP and love everything about it, just consider yourself lucky.
Now for those of you who installed it and uninstalled it thinking that you are in the clear, I hate to be the bearer of bad news but you’re really not.
Then again, if you’re wondering why your traffic has dropped and/or plateaued like you didn’t want it to, then I have the solution for you.
Just like many of you who still have a bad taste in your mouth after downloading AMP, I could not get over the madness and I guess my site couldn’t either.
The AMP Plugin Symptoms
After over a year of dealing with mediocre traffic after blogging my butt off, things just couldn’t seem to pick up.
Again, I figured it was the theme change but even that would’ve been over with in just a couple of weeks.
There were so many things going on that I could not pin point what the real problem was with my site no matter what I tried to do.
After pretty much giving up and almost abandoning my site, I finally figured out the solution to all my problems.
Thanks to this post from wpbeginner.com, I figured out that I did not properly uninstall the AMP plugin.
What?!
Uninstalling AMP does not mean it is gone.
As a matter of fact, you probably only get rid of that little lightning bolt and the cosmetic parts of the plugin but not the behind the scenes nonsense.
So if you have not uninstalled AMP properly, let me give you a quick tutorial on how to get your site back on track.
There is a technical way to do this but I’m going to show you the same plugin that I used to properly uninstall AMP.
This process requires you to download a plugin called “redirection”, which will look like the screenshot below.
Once you have that installed, you will need to access the plugin, which can be found under “tools” and then “redirection”.
add the code /(.*)\/amp in the first line and then https://yourwebsite.com/$1 in the 2nd line.
Don’t forget to change “yourwebsite” to the name of your site and then hit “add redirect”.
That should be all you need to do and you shouldn’t be hit with dupe content anymore.
At this point, you should resubmit your sitemap and fetch your site within Google Search Console.
Conclusion
Plugins can be the best thing ever or they can be an obvious nightmare if you aren’t careful.
Before jumping the gun with any plugin just to please Google, always remember that nothing is truly tested until it’s in the hands of the masses.
Whether you take a hit or not after installing any plugins and whatnot, remember that it is not the end of your site and it usually requires some help that Google can always help you with.
It might not be the easiest thing to find but do not give up and keep digging until you find the root of your problem.
For those of you who didn’t have a negative impact from the AMP plugin, just thank God you didn’t have to endure the pain that myself and others have encountered.
Until next time, go and fix your problem and I hope your site can get the traffic and rankings it deserves.
Happy blogging!
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