MOZ on Using Chrome to View a Website as Googlebot [Guide]
MOZ contributor Alex Harford has published a guide on using Chrome to view a website as Googlebot.
She says, “In this guide, I’ll show you how to set up a Googlebot browser, troubleshoot rendering issues, and improve your SEO audits.
In the past, technical SEO audits were simpler, with websites relying on HTML and CSS and JavaScript limited to minor enhancements like animations. Today, entire websites are built with JavaScript, shifting the workload from servers to browsers. This means that search bots, including Googlebot, must render pages client-side—a process that’s resource-intensive and prone to delays.
Search bots often struggle with JavaScript. Googlebot, for example, processes the raw HTML first and may not fully render JavaScript content until days or weeks later, depending on the website. Some sites use dynamic rendering to bypass these challenges, serving server-side versions for bots and client-side versions for users.
Mini rant
Generally, this setup overcomplicates websites and creates more technical SEO issues than a server-side rendered or traditional HTML website. Thankfully, dynamically rendered websites are declining in use.”
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