"AMP content mismatch" manual action on WordPress AMP pages

Why WordPress AMP pages drift

Most WordPress sites serve AMP through the official AMP plugin or an older AMP add-on. Mismatches usually come from the way the AMP version is built:

• Reader mode templates render posts through a separate, simplified template. Blocks, shortcodes and widgets that the AMP template does not support can vanish, taking tables, product boxes or key paragraphs with them.
• Stripped interactivity: calculators, forms, booking widgets or comment sections that need custom JavaScript are removed, so users cannot complete the same task.
• Different content sources: a page builder layout that AMP cannot render falls back to the raw post content, which may be empty or incomplete.
• Paywall or consent tools that show a teaser on AMP and the full article on the canonical page, or the reverse.
• Wrong pairing: the amphtml link on one article points to another article's AMP URL, or the AMP page's canonical points to the homepage.

The AMP plugin's Standard and Transitional modes reuse your theme and tend to drift less, but the same unsupported-component problem can still appear.

Comparing the two versions

For each affected URL, confirm the pairing first:

curl -s https://example.com/post/ | grep -o '<link rel="amphtml"[^>]*>'
curl -s https://example.com/post/amp/ | grep -o '<link rel="canonical"[^>]*>'

The canonical page should point to its own AMP URL, and the AMP page should point back to that same canonical. A missing or mismatched pair is enough on its own to explain the action: Google compares the AMP page with whatever canonical it declares, so an AMP page pointing at the wrong article will never look like a match. Then run URL Inspection on both and use View tested page to compare the rendered content and screenshots. Google notes that a mismatch can also come from robots.txt blocking significant resources on one version but not the other; the tool lists blocked resources, and you can check rules with the robots.txt tester.

Fix AMP, or retire it

If you keep AMP, switch to a mode that uses your real theme, replace unsupported blocks with AMP-compatible equivalents, and check a sample of each template (posts, products, recipes) side by side.

Many sites choose to drop AMP instead. It has not been required for Top Stories since 2021, and maintaining two versions of every page is exactly how mismatches happen. To retire it:

1. Deactivate the AMP plugin so the amphtml links disappear.
2. Redirect old AMP URLs (/amp/ or ?amp=1) to their canonical pages with a 301. A pattern-based server rule is the practical way; the redirect rule generator can draft one for Apache or Nginx.
3. Clear caches and check a few old AMP URLs return the redirect.

Hydrogen SEO outputs the canonical tag for your regular pages. It does not generate AMP versions, so it is not the source of an AMP template's content.

Asking for the action to be lifted

When your AMP and canonical pages are essentially the same, or the AMP versions are gone and redirected, select Request Review:

Our AMP plugin ran in Reader mode, which dropped product comparison
tables and the booking form from 180 posts. We switched to Transitional
mode using our theme templates and verified 30 posts in URL Inspection.

The decision comes by email. Plan on a wait measured in days or a few weeks. Because regular pages were being shown in place of AMP all along, the traffic effect is often small, and sites that retire AMP may see no difference at all once the review completes.