JavaScript-based pages may appear blank or incomplete in Google’s cache, this is normal and does not indicate a problem.
Google’s search advocate John Mueller illustrates this in the latest installment of the Ask Googlebot video series on YouTube.
An individual submitted a question asking why their JavaScript page was not showing up in Google’s cached view.
Questions are as follows:
“The cached version of the React page shows a blank page. What parameters should I consider when coding a React page using SSR to make it Googlebot friendly?”
A cached page is a snapshot of what the URL looked like when it was last crawled by Googlebot.
When a cached page appears to be empty or missing content, it’s natural to assume that Googlebot had a problem crawling it. But that’s not always the case.
As Mueller explained, Google’s cache only captures HTML elements on the page.
It’s not that Google can’t cache JavaScript, it’s more that Google is hindered by browser limitations.
Google’s cache only shows HTML
Caching JavaScript-based web pages is challenging, Mueller said.
Not from a technical standpoint, but from a security standpoint.
Web browsers have restrictions on how content can be accessed, and may block requests for JavaScript files from other websites (such as Google’s cache).
“Google Search sometimes keeps a copy of the HTML page fetched from the server and displays it to the user as a cached page. However, this is really just the HTML page.
For JavaScript-based sites, it’s a bit more complicated here. Due to browser security, there are restrictions on how content can be accessed from a page.
For example, if a page requires a JavaScript file from your server, the browser may block the request when the request comes from another website. In our case, the other site is Google’s cache.
In practice, this means that JavaScript-based sites often display blank or incomplete pages when displayed from Google’s cache. This is normal and not a sign of a problem. “
While blank pages in Google’s cache can be frustrating, what really matters to search is how pages are indexed.
To be sure, Google can handle JavaScript alone and will try to index a page as the user sees it.
Mueller continued:
“In particular, for indexing, Google will handle JavaScript alone and try to index what a user sees when they visit your site directly. If you want to double-check, you can see this rendered in Google Search Console’s testing tool page version.
For the most part, Google renders and indexes content on JavaScript-based sites just fine. So, in short, it’s normal for a JavaScript website to have an empty or incomplete cached view. This doesn’t indicate a problem, it’s just a technical limitation of the browser. “
To get a more accurate picture of how Google views your pages, use the URL Inspection tool in Search Console.
Featured image: YouTube.com/GoogleSearchCentral, April 2022.
