AMP sites are missing in Safari for iOS 15 due to a Google bug

Accelerated Mobile Pages were launched five years ago as part of Google’s plan to speed up the web on smartphones and tablets. It’s widely adopted, but a bug in Google search today causes Safari users in iOS 15 to no longer receive the AMP version of sites.

Instead of seeing a modified and often simplified webpage optimized for fast load times (via MacStories), you just get the full version. Users don’t see google.com in the address field or the gray bar that shows the domain name of the site to share the full URL. In the case of our site, the difference is below:

CHA:

google.com/amp/s/9to5google.com/2021/10/06/new-google-assistant-design/amp/

Full site:

9to5google.com/2021/10/06/new-google-assistant-design/

According to a company spokesperson at 10:00 a.m. PT, it’s a “bug specific to iOS 15”. As such, using Chrome for iOS or any browser like Safari on iOS 14 still serves you the AMP version. Google is working on a fix and “do you expect[s] this will be resolved soon. That said, the Google AMP bug is still there for iOS 15 and iPad OS Safari users three hours later.

Google AMP Safari iOS 15 — Safari iOS 15

Some on iOS liked this bug, with third-party developers recently creating extensions to get rid of AMP links and automatically redirect users to the full site.

For its part, Google no longer requires that pages that appear in the “Top Stories” search carousel use AMP as long as it is fast enough on its own. This is part of Google’s consideration of “page experience” and speed when ranking websites in search.