rendering
Also called: page rendering
Rendering is the process of turning a page's HTML, CSS, and JavaScript into the DOM and pixels that browsers display and search engines read. Google renders pages in a headless Chromium during crawling, then uses the rendered HTML to index the content.
How Google renders a page
Google splits page processing into three phases: crawling, rendering, and indexing. Googlebot fetches the raw HTML, queues every page that returns a 200 status for rendering, then a headless Chromium (an evergreen build tracking a recent version of Chrome) runs the JavaScript and builds the final DOM. Google reads that rendered HTML to index the content and to find more links. A page can sit in the render queue for a few seconds or longer, so JavaScript-generated content is rarely indexed on the first fetch.
That gap is where sites lose traffic. If your main content, internal links, or title only appear after JavaScript runs, anything that blocks execution (a script error, a robots.txt-blocked bundle, a slow API) can leave Google indexing a near-empty shell.
Rendering is not one method. Developers choose where the work happens:
- Client-side rendering (CSR): the browser builds everything from JavaScript. Fast to ship, hardest for crawlers.
- Server-side rendering (SSR): the server returns finished HTML on each request.
- Static rendering: HTML is generated at build time and served from a CDN.
- Hydration: server HTML loads first, then JavaScript attaches interactivity.
Google’s guidance is direct: server-side or pre-rendering “is still a great idea because it makes your website faster for users and crawlers, and not all bots can run JavaScript.” That last point matters more every year, since many non-Google and AI crawlers do not execute JavaScript at all.
How it affects your traffic
If your site runs on React, Vue, or another JavaScript framework, rendering decides whether Google sees your real content or an empty container. Pages that depend on client-side rendering routinely get indexed with missing text, missing links, or the wrong title, which caps rankings no matter how good the content is. Our JavaScript SEO work audits how each template renders for Googlebot, then moves critical content to server-side or static rendering so it lives in the HTML crawlers read. That is often the difference between a page that ranks and one that never gets indexed.
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