The mobile/AMP mistake that breaks cloaking and CWV at once

The mobile/AMP mistake that breaks cloaking and CWV at once

Failure: running AMP (or a heavy mobile-cache plugin) on a review site with cloaked affiliate links. AMP strips or sandboxes JS and rewrites the page, which can break click tracking, mangle /go/ redirects, and silently drop your rel=sponsored attributes. Meanwhile AMP's appeal — speed — is now matched by a well-built non-AMP theme, so you took on the complexity for a shrinking benefit.

The fix:
— For most review sites in 2026, drop AMP. It's no longer a ranking factor and the link/tracking breakage isn't worth it
— If you keep it, validate that cloaked links and disclosure render in the AMP version (use the AMP URL, not canonical, in the validator)
— Optimize the canonical mobile page properly (lazy-load, critical CSS) instead — same speed, no AMP tax

Gotcha nobody mentions: AMP serves from Google's cache on a different origin, so cookie-based attribution and consent banners behave differently — you can be compliant on canonical and non-compliant on AMP without ever seeing the AMP page yourself.

Bottom line: on a modern review site AMP usually costs you tracking and disclosure integrity for speed you can get without it — drop it and tune the real page.