In a recent episode of Google’s “Search Off The Record” podcast, Zoe Clifford from the rendering team joined Martin Splitt and John Mueller from Search Relations to discuss how Google handles JavaScript-heavy websites.
Google affirms that it renders all websites in its search results, even if those sites rely on JavaScript.
Rendering Process Explained
In the context of Google Search, Clifford explained that rendering involves using a headless browser to process web pages.
This allows Google to index the content as a user would see it after JavaScript has executed and the page has fully loaded.
Clifford stated
“We run a browser in the indexing pipeline so we can index the view of the web page as a user would see it after it has loaded and JavaScript has executed.”
All HTML Pages Rendered
One of the podcast’s most significant revelations was that Google renders all HTML pages, not just a select few. Despite the resource-intensive process, Google has committed to this approach to ensure comprehensive indexing.
Clifford confirmed:
“We just render all of them, as long as they’re HTML and not other content types like PDFs.”