Google announced yesterday that news sites no longer need to publish using AMP to be seen in the top stories carousel, specifically for COVID-19 related news. Google said for other news topics you need AMP, but there is now an exception made for COVID-19 related news.

Why? It is to allow more news sources, with more local content specific to that searcher, to be seen by more local searchers.

Again, this is only for COVID-19 related news. Other news topics still require AMP pages to be in the top stories carousel.

Google wrote on Twitter “we also made a change where both AMP and non-AMP stories will appear in Top Stories for searches that are coronavirus-related.” “AMP remains necessary to be considered for other topics,” Google added.

Here is that tweet:

Of course, AMP only really applies to mobile search results in this case.

Forum discussion at Twitter.