Disable AMP in WordPress with SEO-Friendly Way

The Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project is an open source initiative which claims to improve the mobile user-experience. The implementation of AMP is not easy. There are lots of potential issues which arise after using AMP. Therefore, it’s better to disable AMP as soon as possible.

  1. Remove the link rel="amphtml" from the non-amp pages.
  2. Set NOINDEX for AMP pages

Before I jump into technical explanation with exact steps, let me tell you …

Why removing AMP is a great idea?

  • For a moment, please forget about “Speed is a ranking factor” statement. Only having a fastest mobile site on the Internet with the terrible design is not sufficient for the growth of the blog. As far monetary value and branding concerned, if your blog is not performing well due to AMP, why take the risk?
  • Imagine if you have 1000 pages, Isn’t complicated to ensure that all AMP pages are working properly or not? The Google Search Console display limited information, that’s not sufficient for a webmaster to analyze the usability of AMP pages.
  • AMP increases extra work for a blogger. Not all bloggers are tech-savvy. I had to check each web page. I found somewhere YouTube iframe is not working, no comment form, even some HTML code was not working in my author box, etc. Indeed, AMP forces webmasters to sacrifice a lot.
  • I consider, using extra plugins as inviting possible bugs, security concern, and conflict with other plugins. So, far I couldn’t find any reliable plugin for AMP.
  • Currently, AMP is not a ranking factor for mobile SERPs. Yeah, it may awesome, mind blowing for a news publisher for ranking under the header so called “Top Stories”. But, what’s about a new blog? Is it worth to take the risk for AMP?
AMP is not a ranking factor

Why I removed AMP from my Blog? – Big Reasons

Just after few days of installing AMP plugin, I had to deal with lots of frustrating issues. So, I was very disappointed and I decided to remove it. Below are few links of notable issues.

Reference: List of problems I faced with AMP for WP plugin

  • https://wordpress.org/support/topic/facing-redirection-loop-non-slash-to-slash/
  • https://wordpress.org/support/topic/is-showing-different-in-amp/
  • https://wordpress.org/support/topic/missing-trailing-slash/
  • https://twitter.com/TheGulshanKumar/status/827897651282706432

Even, I had to fixed AMP issues page by page as far I could discover –

  • I noticed that in the AMP, Google AdSense does not perform well.
  • When you have long content pages, verifying the each web page element is working properly or not become tedious. I was afraid to see that some of my YouTube video iframes were not working. Finally, I fixed it too by adding some required JS, for a moment it was unknown.

How to disable AMP pages for WordPress?

Golden rules

Don’t just deactivate any AMP plugin and assume done.

Don’t redirect from AMP to Non-AMP permalinks when AMP pages are still indexed in SERPs. Otherwise your organic visitor will see an error.

AMP error
AMP Sucks many ways and this is one of them how hard it is to opt out.

Concept behind the solution for disabling AMP without error 404

As we know that Googlebot discovers AMP pages using the  rel="amphtml" link from the website header.

Fortunately, this markup has nothing to do directly for human visitors. So, we can remove it to tell folks at Google, I mean Googlebot that we don’t have any AMP version of Web Page. 🤷

Meanwhile Google de-indexes pages, we will temporarily keep serving AMP pages to our visitors by keeping our AMP plugin active.

While the discussion on this hot topic, the main question was in our mind-

What if Google considers AMP version pages as duplicate URL for canonical?

Of course, it will be because we have removed relation markup. Based on this concept, I highly recommend using NOINDEX for removing AMP pages from Google Search.

To disable AMP pages properly without affecting SEO, all you need to follow major two steps:-

  1. First, remove the link rel="amphtml" output from the non-amp pages.
  2. Set NOINDEX for AMP pages

Interesting isn’t it? Let’s get into practical details step by step.

Recommended method for AMP Users

AMP official
  • Deactivate and Delete AMP plugin.
  • Install and activate AMP for WP plugin (This will make process easier)
  • Go to Advanced Settings of AMP for WP
  • Enable “Change End Point to ?amp” to restore AMP official plugin permalink structure.
  • Again in advanced settings, do you see text area for Enter HTML in Head ? Enter below code.
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow"/>
  • Last, scroll page down till last, enable “Dev Mode in AMP“.
  • Keep this status for 7 days until all AMP pages are gone from SERPs.

Recommended method for AMP for WP Users

amp for wp
  • Install and activate AMP for WP plugin
  • Go to Advanced Settings of AMP for WP
  • Do you see text area for Enter HTML in Head ? Enter below code to noindex AMP from SERPs.
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow"/>
  • Scroll page down, enable “Dev Mode in AMP“.
  • Keep this status for 7 days until all AMP pages are gone from SERPs.

That’s all. And, this is proper SEO-friendly way to get rid of AMP.

FYI: When you enable dev mode, it automatically remove rel=”amphtml”. 😎


Old method for AMP for WP Users

Step 1. Remove rel=”amphtml” output from the head

Using RegEx, you can match the string and replace it with your desired value (which is blank). I think this is the far easiest for removing rel="amphtml" from WordPress HTML output.

In simple words, with below clever steps, we will scan AMP markup in the HTML pages of WordPress, we will remove it on the fly using Search & Replace via RegEx.

Regular Expressions
Validated Regular Expressions

Process

To remove the rel="amphtml" link from the head, head over to these steps.

  1. Install & activate a most useful plugin called Real-Time Find and Replace. This plugin allows you to dynamically (i.e. at the time when a page is generated) replace code and text from themes and other plugins with code and text of your choosing before a page is delivered to a user’s browser.
    real time find and replace
  2. Go to Tools > Real-Time Find and Replace
    Real Time Find and Replace Settings
  3. Check Use Regex
  4. In the Find field, type exactly <link rel="amphtml" href="(.+)" >
  5. In the Replace field, leave it blank.
  6. Update settings. That’s all.
    remove AMP rel markup

We are Thankful to the author, this plugin saves our valuable time.

Step 2. Setup NOINDEX for AMP pages

This is an important step to avoid duplicate content indexing as in the last steps we have removed rel="amphtml" from the website header.

  1. Open AMP for WP plugin settings
  2. Go to SEO
  3. Add below meta code to the head section
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow"/>
noindex amp

This process will not affect the ranking of your canonical (Non-AMP) pages .

Alternatively, add below snippet using Code Snippets plugin.

// remove rel="amphtml" added by AMP for WP plugin
add_filter('ampforwp_modify_rel_canonical', 'prefix_remove_amphtml'); function prefix_remove_amphtml($amphtml){ return; }

// set noindex for AMP pages
$url = "//{$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']}{$_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"]}";
if (preg_match("#/amp/#", $url))
{
	header( "X-Robots-Tag: noindex, follow", true );
}

How to Check Noindex status of AMP?

Here’s the easy way –

  1. Go to Google.com
  2. Search like https://www.gulshankumar.net/*/amp/

After following above process, you need to keep your AMP plugin activated till you see 0 indexed AMP pages in the Search.

Things to Do After 7 days when AMP pages noindex completes

Thanks for reading this article so far. I greatly appreciate your valuable time. If you need any urgent help regarding removal of AMP pages or need a solution for the custom approach. Please feel free to discuss in the comment section. Next moment, I’ll be there with you to assist. Thanks!

This method is tested and it worked for me. I am fortunate enough, this guide has been appreciated by the author of Marketing91, The Kinsta Blog and more.

feedback
kinsta feedback
11 Sep 2017, https://kinsta.com/blog/disable-google-amp/

Leave a Comment

160 thoughts on “Disable AMP in WordPress with SEO-Friendly Way”

  1. Hey Gulshan,

    thanks for this great article. What is the reason for waiting deindexing of the pages to initate the redirect from AMP to non AMP? Can we do the redirection together with noindexing? By the way I will keep the AMP plugin running since I see all the pages are deindexed.

    Thank you

    Reply
        • I advise that please do not set redirect before noindexing. I checked your site and pages is being served by Google owned domain (google.com)
          https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.example.com/permalink/amp/

          So even if we set redirect at our example.com that won’t redirect. Google may start throwing some error page instead as they cannot find the AMP version. I hope this clarifies.

          Reply
  2. I have a new blog website with 20+ blogs.. I’m not a tech person just love to write so started a blog to earn..
    I recently removed AMP as I didn’t liked the way it changes my theme to the users and make it ugly plus I’ve heard it affects adsense earning which I was above to apply for in few days.. so I thought removing this AMP thing now would be better rather than after starting adsense.. at 1st I didn’t knew the right method so I simply deactivated & deleted the plugin which gave a lot of problems to my site.. then I saw tons a million youtube video’s followed coding then it started working a little but still showing errors like page disabled.. disallowed.. etc.. I tried to fix that too.. and now what happening is when I go to index my blogs at 1st it says everything is great the url is indexed but when I refresh it it says Url not Google, page crawled but cannot be indexed.. & now all my pages are in not indexed list in Google search Console.. I’ve totally loosed my patience don’t know what to do.. can you please help as I really need to start earning from that website.. I’m 7 month’s pregnant and in need for generating revenue from that blog website.. the errors are not letting any traffic to come on my page there’s no point of applying for adsense without traffic.. I don’t know what to do..

    Reply
  3. Enjoyed reading the article above, really explains everything in detail, and the article is very interesting and effective. Thank you and good luck with the upcoming articles

    Reply
  4. Hello sir 🙏

    Sir AMP Disable karne ke process me sirf 3 post aur 4 pages deindex nahi ho rahe to kya kare

    Please reply

    Reply
  5. Hello🙏 sir
    Sir Maine 18 March ko AMP Disable karne k liye no index ka process kiya tha. Ajj 21 March ko maine Google search console me AMP pages check kiye usme 7-8 page abhi bhi index ho rahe hai.
    Lekin maine jab Google AMP testing tool me apni sit ko check kiya to usme AMP invalid dikha raha hai to bhai kya ham redirection wale process karne k liye tyar hai.

    Reply
  6. Thanks for the valuable tips. Followed the steps under “Recommended method for AMP for WP Users”. Now no AMP indexed pages on Search Console (it took 3 weeks to go them away). But on Google searches some AMP pages appear. Example:
    https://example.com › blog1 › amp › page
    What to do next?

    Reply
    • Thanks for your kind feedback. You can wait a few more weeks to let AMP pages completely disappear from the SERPs.

      Reply
  7. Thanks this has been a very helpful guide! I disabled AMP and found that I lost traffic because I no longer appeared on google Discover. Turns out this was feeding me about 15-20% of my traffic. However, leaving AMP has increased my ad earnings quite substantially so I think I am ahead from an earnings POV. However, I really wish there was a way to enable AMP specifically to appear on Google Discover. Any suggestions?

    Reply
  8. Thank you so much for this article! easy to read and understand for average webmaster. This really help me when I want to remove this AMP headache.

    Reply
  9. Okay, maybe not such a bad article… But too technical. I’m going to message you if I have questions.

    Reply
  10. This article is totally confusing. You need to elaborate; you need to explain more. You understand what needs to be done, but you’re explaining it terribly.

    Reply
    • Please read article more than once, maybe twice or thrice. I am sure, you will be able to understand.
      All steps are clearly written in seperated heading. Feel free to ask if you’ve any specific question. I am always ready to help.

      Reply
  11. Hi Gulshan, I’ve tried the tutorial on this post, and it works perfectly.

    But i has a little problem: out of 200 AMP pages, there’s still 7 pages that has deindexed yet.

    Pic: https://i.ibb.co/w0ngTjT/IMG-20210813-090834.jpg

    I’ve waiting for 1 month, but the number still same.

    Here is the question.

    1. Is this normal?
    2. Is it alright if i delete AMP for WP plugin now?
    3. Do i need to redirect those 7 pages using Redirection plugin?

    I wanna hear your advises.

    Reply
    • Hi Alfiant, Please give it sometime. There is no side-affect of leave AMP plugin for a while when noindex is process is underway. Thanks!

      Reply
  12. I switched my blog for amp few months ago. After a months I deleted plugin without thinking of SEO. It hurt my blog on SERP. Very bad experience. Your detailed post will help people not to take risks as I did with my blog.

    Reply
  13. Hi Gulshan. Great article you have here.

    I’ve done removing rel=”amphtml” and add nofollow meta tag.

    But i have one doubt. My site is using 404 to 301 plugin, is it alright if i install Redirection plugin right away?

    Do these two plugins will conflict with each other or not?

    Reply
    • Avoid nofollow, use noindex as per article. Cannot say anything about 404 to 301 that’s a different thing and not recommended.

      Reply
  14. Waw this is what i need i want remove my AMP page but afraid SEO effect…
    But bow im confidence to remove my AMP plugin…
    Sorry for my broken English and Thanks

    Reply
  15. I used amp-wp plugin first but it produced just blank pages and then i switched to amp official plugin. So I donot want to go back to the amp-wp plugin – in this case what is the choice

    Reply
  16. Hello sir,
    In fact I have tried AMP plugin for 2 times, but as it was giving error in Google Search Console. I removed it by deactivating it. But didn’t followed these mentioned steps. Do I have to install it once again. As such I don’t want AMP version of my blog.

    Thanks in advance!
    Akhilesh

    Reply
    • Hi Akhilesh,
      Thanks for your comment at my Remove AMP article.

      May I know, what is the error message in your Search Console? So I can help you out.

      Thanks & Regards,
      Gulshan

      Reply
      • Hi,
        There are 3 errors showed in GSC which are being shared respectively-
        1. Only amp-boilerplate and amp-custom ‘style’ tags are allowed, and only in the document head.
        2. Custom JavaScript is not allowed.
        3. Disallowed attribute or attribute value present in HTML tag.

        Since I am not too much technically sound about reasons why errors which are being showed in Google Search console are displayed. So I just gets them disabled.

        Thanks in advance!

        Reply
  17. Hey, i tried removing the amp for the site. I noticed that the amp pages are not decreasing in the past few days.
    Can you suggest to me what should I do now? It’s been more than a week since i follwed the steps.

    Reply
  18. Thank you for your post. Are there any other settings in AMP that need to be clicked other than the Dev? For example, I noticed on te Search Result Page in AMP and Category Description are set to ON. Should they be?

    Reply
  19. Hey, i am stuck in between as I don’t know where I can add the code you provided to add in the CODE SNIPPET plugin. I’ve installed the plugin and can see 5 options: Example HTML shortcode, Example CSS Snippet,Example JavaScript snippet, Order snippets by name , Order snippets by date.
    Can you briefly explain where can i add the code?

    Reply
      • In HTML section.
        Also can you tell me why is the code snippet plugin used?
        Can I use redirection in place of that?
        Also thankyou for the help 🙂

        Reply
        • Not in HTML section. In fact, you can delete all those examples code which comes by default. It is just a demo by Code Snippet. Not useful.

          For noindexing AMP pages, you can place code snippet this way – https://i.imgur.com/RSCgjj9.png

          I do not suggest redirection. You can do [only] once AMP pages are gone.

          Reply
          • Thanks. So, should I delete the redirection plugin directly?
            Also, when can I delete the Code Snippet plugin? after one week or never?

          • There is no role of Redirection at the moment.
            You can delete Code Snippet plugin after deactivating AMP plugin after one week.

          • Thanks for the help.
            I have added the code. Can you tell me what now should I do, I have completed all the steps but can’t see any changes? And can I delete the code snippet plugin when the amp will be completely removed?

  20. Hi Gulshan,

    Thank you for giving me some solid reasons to remove AMP from my website, which I really wanted to do so.

    I’ve removed the AMP from my website successfully without any errors or problems!

    Here’s a #tip for others wanting to remove AMP easily:

    1. Open the AMP’s Pluging Settings.
    2. Switch to Supported Templates tab.
    3. Now, uncheck all the “Content types enabled for AMP” options.
    3. Hit the save button.

    What will happen then?

    Unchecking to all will set up a permanent 301 redirect of AMP-enabled pages to Non-AMP pages, and that happens without any errors.

    What do next?

    Just wait for some days when you find your Search Console shows 0 AMP pages indexed.

    Then disable the AMP plugin from your WordPress website.

    And that’s all!

    I hope this helps you!

    Thanks and regards!
    Deepak Gupta, Techshali.com

    Reply
  21. Hello Gulshan,

    I was using newspaper theme with their inbuilt AMP plugin and mobile theme.

    After removing AMP i installed wp for amp and followed both steps

    I have enabled “Change End Point to ?amp”
    And in advanced settings,entered HTML in Head as you mentioned.

    My questions are:

    After that do I need to disable amp ads in Adsense?

    When should I deactivate amp for wp plugin? after 7 days?

    Reply
    • 1. To avoid losing Advt revenue, you can keep AMP ads as long AMP for WP plugin is active for the noindex process.
      2. Yes, after 7 days or when AMP version page doesn’t appear in the SERPs.

      Reply
  22. Hi! Thanks for the tutorial!!!
    If I follow the new method for AMPfor WP users, should I still redirect from AMP to no-amp after a week?

    Reply
  23. Happier to don’t use AMP..

    Thanks bro..
    I also want to remove it from GWM. Its seem Google bot still always crawling on my entire ?amp page..

    Reply
  24. I am looking to remove the ampforwp plugin, found this helpful article. Thanks, Gulshan for an informative article. But, here comes the actual issue, I have also found an article from the actual plugin authors at their website to remove their own plugin. The difference is have found is that your article suggests adding the code in the “Enter HTML in Head” section present in the advanced section of the plugin. But the author’s article shows that to add the code in the SEO section present in plugin. Their article does not mention enabling the dev mode. I am a bit confused now on which article to follow. I don’t want to have any issues on removing amp. What do you suggest?

    Reply
    • To properly remove AMP,
      Day 1
      1. You must add suggested noindex meta tag in head. This will hint Google you don’t want to show AMP.
      2. Last, we need to rel="amphtml" markup from head to cut the link of AMP from the non-amp pages. There are many ways to do this. Either enable dev mode, use Real Time Find Replace or snippet. However you do, it’s important.

      Day 7
      3. Now, you should add redirect from AMP to Non-AMP pages. (This is not mandatory, optionally recommended to avoid 404 for the old AMP slug).

      Reply
      • Thank you for this. AMP “seemed” like a great idea for a client at first. However, after AMP started to show more than the original page, ad revenues dropped, and this is not ideal. Hopefully, Google figures out another way because this is worse.

        Reply
        • I believe AMP version pages will end soon. As many publishers have not felt satisifed with this approach.

          Reply
  25. Hai Gulshan as per your article I have decided to remove ampforwp so I have done the redirect to deindex the posts, but its more than 15 days still some amp posts are showing up in google search. So how to proceed further can I deactivate the ampforwp plugin.

    Reply
      • Sorry gulshan by mistake I have typed as redirect instead of noindex, its more than 15 days still 10 posts are showing in search console as AMP.

        As per your advice I have checked in this format /*/amp with my website, it shows 4 to 5 posts from that only 2 are showing as AMP when I checked that posts it goes to the AMP homepage. Can you please tell me how to proceed further. Thank You

        Reply
  26. Currently I am still using AMP and I have experienced a bad Speed ​​Index drop in PSI both in page views and in posts.

    Unlike the non AMP displays all work fine close to 100%.

    I want to ask before releasing the AMP, is there any effect on the PSI speed index on AMP? why did it make such a bad number? and how to optimize it?

    If not, in 2021, is AMP still important to use?

    Reply
  27. Worked for my site, thanks for updating the post, please update the AMP for WP aspect. As of the time of this comment, the AMP for WP plugin developers have made some changes.

    Reply
  28. Hi, i amp-ed my site few days ago, but none all of my is index in google page. However, it is still indexed in Google webmaster, showing all the errors.
    I have deactivated the amp plugin, will it affect SEO?

    Reply
  29. Hello!

    You may setup a Redirection rule

    From
    /(.*)/(.*)?amp(.*)

    To
    https://example.com/$1

    As discussed earlier.

    Thanks & Regards,
    Gulshan

    Reply
  30. Hi Gulshan,

    I was using amp using newspaper theme’s provided amp support. It created amp pages with /?amp/ url pattern rather than /amp/. I am trying to remove amp now completely. It there any way i can make a 301 redirect using my htaccess to redirect to non amp pages?

    Reply
  31. I’ve tried this method and it works quite well I suppose, but it’s been more than 4 days and not all the AMP pages have been deindexed. What do I do? I’m losing on Adsense revenue since AMP decreases my RPM and CPC.

    Reply
  32. it was very helpful
    my adsense earning was going down from last 3 months
    after applying these changes earning has been restored within week

    Reply
  33. 85% bounce rate & 85% exit rate when compared to non-amp pages.

    traffic declining gradually.

    1st-time enabled traffic lost unusual disabled amp and updates disavow links

    for disavowing links traffic decreased by 50% and after amp deactivation traffic went 5% to 50%.

    Reply
  34. Hey Gulshan, thank you for the great post!
    I don’t use WP AMP but AMP plugin from Automattic.

    Where can I put the meta code () because I have no SEO Tab in the AMP Plugin.

    Please help me!
    Tanks in advance!

    Reply
  35. I have Followed this article step by step and it’s have been 5 day’s since i deindex amp url but iam not seeing any deindex on my google search console account plz help iam getting lots of problems due :pensive: to amp.

    Reply
  36. To switch back to AMP,

    1. Deactivate and Delete Real Time Find and replace plugin
    2. Remove meta noindex tag from the head section of AMP plugin.

    Done.

    Reply
  37. I have used this method to remove amp pages. But now if I want to switch back to amp again, what are the required steps? Please provide the procedure for that.

    Reply
    • To switch back to AMP,

      1. Deactivate and Delete Real Time Find and replace plugin
      2. Remove meta noindex tag from the head section of AMP plugin.

      Done.

      Reply
  38. Hey Gulshan,

    Thanks a bunch for the step by step guide, but i think i might need some extra help.

    I currently have many canonical pages indexed, and after installing AMP for wordpress, 95 of them are now indexed as AMP pages on only mobile serps.
    How do I deindex the amp version only? While keeping the canonical versions indexed?

    Here’s how i put myself in this position –
    1. Installed Amp for WordPress, not AMP for WP (not sure if this make a difference)
    2. After 5 days, now 95 pages on only mobile serps are indexed, which decreased traffic by alot
    3. I deactivated and deleted plugin from wordpress without doing much research which was stupid

    Then I followed your steps above:
    1. Removed rel=”amphtml” using plugin
    2. Installed AMP for WP plugin, not the AMP for WordPress plugin which i originally installed (not sure if this makes a difference)
    3. Input

    Any help is appreciated.

    Reply
    • Your last two steps are right. At the place of 3. Input, I would suggest set Noindex using meta tag in the AMP for WP plugin.

      Reply
  39. Hi Gulshan,

    Thank you very much for making it so simple. I was thinking of removing AMP for a long time but like all, I was afraid of negative SEO effect. I don’t see any negative effect, on contrary, I see the positive effect but due to other factors like topical search increase.

    Thanks again.

    Reply
  40. bhai mujhe pahle pata nhi tha or maine direct ampplugin remove kar diya jisse meri site ka bura haal ho gaya hai. real time to maine active kar diya but kya AMP bhi dubara install karna pdega ? please bro tell me

    Reply
  41. Hi,
    Thanks for sharing this information.
    But what if I have already deleted the AMP plugin? Should i reinstall it and follow the process mentioned above?

    Reply
  42. Thanks for the Post. I have just followed the same to deactivate the AMP on my blog. Waiting for the reindexing of google crawl of my pages.

    Reply
  43. Thanks for the Post. I have just followed the same to deactivate the AMP on my blog. Waiting for the reindexing of google crawl of my pages.

    Reply
  44. Hi, Just now I submitted my AMP sitemap for non-indexing, after following the steps mentioned. Must say, your tutorial is awesome with clear instructions and images to understand it better! Just perfect for non-techies like us.
    However, just now I checked the Google search console and found this message : “Your Sitemap appears to be an HTML page. Please use a supported sitemap format instead.”

    Now, what it means? And also, Google search console is displaying “Your page is not mobile friendly”

    Is it okay?

    Please help!

    Reply
  45. Hello GulshanKumar,
    I installed AMP for WP plugin on my site. But still it’s not showing on Google.

    Please help.

    Reply
  46. Hi Mika,
    Once you know that your pages has been removed from the SERPs, please feel free to delete Real Time Find & Replace & AMP plugin also. 🙂
    All the best!

    Reply
  47. Really thanks to write this posting. It helps to know why my adsense income decrease 90% suddenly after installing amp system.
    I would like to know that after all process(including deactivating and deleting AMP for-WP Plugin), is this okay to delete [Real-Time Find and Replace plugin]?

    Reply
    • Hi Mika,
      Once you know that your pages has been removed from the SERPs, please feel free to delete Real Time Find & Replace & AMP plugin also. 🙂
      All the best!

      Reply
  48. Dear friends, this is a great article, I used to disable one of my sites. Great.

    I have a big trouble with another one. The plugin create a technical problem, I can’t access to the plugin panel and clic the tabs (freezing). I sent several emails to the developers but I haven’t any answer (the price to have a free plugin).

    I’m wondering If I can delete the plugin, no more options. I’m afraid to loose google ranking (I will start again) and duplicate pages.

    What do you think, could you give some ideas? I’m dummy in this field, I’m a single writer.

    Thanks a lot, Marcelo

    Reply
  49. Hello your article is a lifesaver. Recently I removed amp from a blog and it ended with 404 error (from google amp domain).

    But I am using your steps as

    1. removing amphtml tag
    2. making noindex to ensure google won’t index the amp version.

    Let’s see if this works. (I know it will)

    Cheers! good work.

    Reply
  50. Thanks for the post. Great work 🙂
    I have a big trouble, before know about this post I had sent an email to the developers of the plugin. Misteriously I can’t clic in any tab to complete the Step 2. The tab (Inn settings) doesnt work, like freeze.

    Can you help me please?

    Reply
  51. Do AdSense has anything related to AMP? If yes, how? I have seen so much shout out om AdSense users getting lesser price of ads

    Reply
  52. No worries. If you have followed all steps correctly, I am sure everything will go smoothly. All the best!!

    Reply
  53. I’m so glad in finding this useful content, thanks to the author – I noticed that ever since I activated AMP, my Adsense revenue decreased automatically, I hardly earn 3 dollars a day, I was wondering.

    Until I found out it was AMP, but then I was afraid to deactivate it because of 404 error.

    I’ve followed the process, by 4 days I will check back and see.

    Thanks.

    Reply
    • No worries. If you have followed all steps correctly, I am sure everything will go smoothly. All the best!!

      Reply
  54. Hello, thank you for your great tutorials. I think this is the best article I’ve found so far since I am a beginner.

    I noticed that I made a mistake by directly deactiving and removing the plugin without considering your steps above. Will it affect on my website’s performance?

    Then how could I fix the errors I found on the Google Console about the AMP errors after I deleted the plugin?

    I would be very happy if you are willing to help me.

    Thank you 🙂

    Reply
  55. Thank you so much for this evergreen content. You have saved me the stress of trying to enable Adsense ads and other affiliate ads on my AMP blog. I just finished following the instruction above. Now my only problem is that I didn’t implement the AMP successful so some of my blog posts are not indexed on AMP page but are still ranking high on Google. Hope it won’t affect my traffic after resubmitting my sitemap.

    Reply
  56. Thanks for posting this excellent tutorial. I followed your instructions and I think I’m heading in the right direction as far as disabling AMP is concerned. I had just 1 AMP page indexed to begin with … it seems like the AMP for WP plugin was generating tons of errors in Search Console all along and for that reason Google could not index any AMP pages.

    This is what I had yesterday:

    Indexed AMP pages: 1
    AMP pages with critical issues: 3152

    And today I have:

    Indexed AMP pages: 0
    AMP pages with critical issues: 1756

    I deactivated the AMP for WP plugin after seeing 0 Indexed pages but what concerns me is that in Search Console it is still showing AMP pages with critical issues: 1756. Why do you think that is? If no pages are indexed, It should have been 0 right?

    Not sure if I deactivated the plugin too quickly?

    Also, after deactivating the plugin when I go to

    http://www.example.com/amp/

    it takes me to the main page of my website but in the URL bar I can still see

    http://www.example.com/amp/

    instead of only

    http://www.example.com/

    ?? Why do you think that might be?

    This was the case before I set up redirection in my .htaccess following your instructions… and it is still doing the same thing after the redirection code has been implemented …

    Do you have any idea why this might be happening?

    Thanks again for your thoughts.

    Best,

    Reply
  57. Thanks Gulshan for this great tutorial !!

    Google took 20 days to no-index all my AMP URL’s.

    Today I redirected all AMP URL’s to Non-AMP URL’s by following your htaccess method.

    They are working fine. Thanks.

    Reply
  58. Hi Anoop,

    To keep image size in the control,
    * Do not use many colors
    * Choose right format such as PNG for illustration, JPG for real image
    * After then, I prefer to compress using ShortPixel or TinyPNG.

    I hope this helps.
    Thanks

    Reply
  59. hello sir i have noticed that your blog image is only 13 kb when its size is 713*429. but when i creat a jpg image even 300*200 its is more than 50kb . please give me some tips to reduce image size.

    Reply
  60. Hi Gulshan, I wish I found this blog post earlier before disabling the amp plugin. I disabled it and let the google bot cache the 404 pages of the non existing amp pages because that is what is suggested by google when I read the in developers.google.com. The problem now is my ranking dropped and googlebot slows down on crawling the site. I reinstalled the amp plugin again to see if the ranking will go back again. Do you think what I did is right? Do you have any tips on how to bring back my ranking? Thanks in advance.

    Reply
    • Hi Manny,

      I think, Your ranking dropped because you followed a single wrong step which was – removing AMP plugin directly. You could have noindex your AMP pages gracefully. If Google list 10 search results for any query, you remove AMP plugin, what will happen? User will simply land to error 404 page. They will pick another result. Eventually, ranking will drop.

      That’s why I say, never ever directly remove plugin or even try to setup any kind of redirect – because it will NOT work.

      Instead, focus on noindexing AMP pages properly, if you don’t want to loose ranking and traffics.

      What you can do right now? Let me highlight some points
      Step 1. Keep installed AMP for WP Plugin, till AMP pages are not noindexed automatically by Google.
      Step 2. Set noindex using meta tag in the plugin settings
      Step 3. Remove rel=”ampthtml” link as I described above.
      Step 4. Wait at least a week. Keep eye on the AMP status via Search Console.
      Step 5. Update your site regularly, this will encourage Googlebot to crawl regularly.
      Step 6. Once AMP is noindexed, and you don’t see any AMP results for your website in the mobile serps, then feel free to remove AMP plugin, do whatever you want. But, don’t remove AMP without properly noindexing.

      Hopefully, you will recover your ranking back.

      Thanks & Regards,
      Gulshan

      Reply
    • Hey sahil,
      AMP provide a light version of your website, as you know loading speed is a very important factor for ranking and because it increases loading speed then surely it will affect your rankings.

      P.S. : AMP sites are also given priority by Google.

      Thanks.

      Reply
  61. Hi,

    thanks for your tutorial!

    Yesterday I removed AMP completely from my site. To be fair, it brought a lot of traffic, but in the end the monetarization is really bad.

    I hope it will not impact my traffic that much, but maybe I’m happier now with my beautiful RESPONSIVE theme.

    Reply
  62. Hi Gulshan,

    Thanks for your informative blog! I have done the steps mentioned above, I’m currently in a waiting game with Google to de-index the AMP pages.

    How would I know if all the pages were de-indexed completely? Just webmaster tools? Can I disable the Mobile redirection while waiting for Google to de-index the AMP pages?

    Reply
  63. Hello,

    Yes, you can remove both plugin – AMP and Real time Find and Replace; once AMP pages successfully get Noindexed from the Search Engine.

    Later just for normal user, if you wish you can setup redirect from AMP to Non-AMP pages to prevent from simple 404 hits on AMP. It’s not compulsory.

    Thanks & Regards,
    Gulshan

    Reply
  64. Hi Bro,

    I have done it above section post, and suceesfully done it on my website.

    I like to know after Amp pages removed successfully

    1) Shall i remove Amp Plugins Completely ?

    2) And also shall i remove the Real-Time Find and Replace Plugin also in plugin section ?

    Can you clarify the above two doubts bro ?

    Thank you

    Reply
  65. I wasn’t aware of these steps.

    I simply deleted and deactivated AMP Plugin. It impacted traffic, but is stable now.

    AMP does not look good and as you said it showed a lot of error in search console.

    Reply
  66. What a great post this is.

    Waiting for more articles,

    Good luck bro! Please fix comment box bug it gets disappear when we tried to write a comment.

    Reply
    • Thanks dear, I will make sure to add more articles in coming days. Also, I will fix the comment box issue. Thanks for reporting about it.

      Reply
  67. Hello Gulshan,

    Thanks for this detailed post. I have also installed the AMP on my blog after reading various articles online. But Its really a hefty job to configure everything especially the error I received in my Google webmasters account. It is so time consuming job. After that I remove the AMP and installed a responsive WordPress themes. Its works great on desktop and mobile devices too. Thanks again for sharing these great insights.

    Have a great day 🙂
    Vishwajeet

    Reply
  68. Thanks for the info! Your site is a real gem. Can you tell me how you create the coloured boxes in your posts?

    Thanks again 🙂

    Reply
  69. Hey Gulshan, great post!
    I haven’t WP AMP but AMP plugin from Automattic.
    So could i add

    by Yoast SEO AMP settings?
    Yoast permits to add Extra code in .

    Reply
  70. Thank you so much for providing this, I have just tried and and hope it works for me, too! Thank you, Namaste xo

    Reply
  71. Pretty! Тһis һas been an incredibly wonderful article.
    Many thankѕ for providing tһеsе details for disabling AMP

    Reply
  72. Thank you so much for sharing the clear tutorial about remove the AMP totaly.

    I will gothrough your article and try it on our website.

    Keep sharing more wonderful articles.

    Reply
    • Hi Dear Navis,
      Welcome back to my blog! I will make sure to keep updating with the most useful content. Thanks for stopping by!

      Reply
  73. Hi, Thanks for sharing your valuable thoughts on this article. I am trying my best to keep this article simple and easy to follow for everyone. Thanks.

    Reply
  74. This is one of the best and most useful tutorials i have read on removing amp. I did not remove amp till date even with its poor performance in ads and earnings because I was afraid of the 404’s it will result in. But with this method I will surely remove it asap. Thanks a lot Gulshan for this brilliant method.

    Reply