Google Webmaster Update: Blocking JavaScript & CSS Can Affect Indexing

Google Webmaster Update: Blocking JavaScript & CSS Can Affect Indexing

A new update in Google’s webmaster guidelines has website administrators reaching for the unblock commands on CSS and JavaScript indexing. According to the Google Webmaster Central Blog, Google’s latest indexing system update helps it function better as a modern browser that includes active JavaScript and CSS. Their advice on allowing their Googlebots to access the CSS, JavaScript and image files of a website is explicit, saying that activating them will provide optimal indexing and rendering of websites. Conversely, disallowing crawling of CSS or JavaScript files in your site can harm how well their new algorithms index and render content, which can in turn result in suboptimal placements and rankings.

The upgraded system will require procedural changes for webmasters and website administrators. According to Google, users should no longer regard their indexing algorithm as a test-only system. As Google enters a new phase of development, webmasters should be advised that their rendering engine may not support all technologies and that website designs must adhere to stated progressive enhancement principles, thus ensuring engines can scan usable and supported content. Google also reminds webmasters that the speed to load a page is important for indexing and for users. Webmasters should also be reminded that servers must enable support that serves CSS and JavaScript files to Googlebots.

Furthermore, Google has also updated its Fetch diagnostic tool, which enables webmasters to simulate how the search engine crawls URLs on a website. In the past, Google’s Fetch mode only crawled URLs that correspond to a specific path requested. When successful, the crawled URL can be reviewed to check for and debug connectivity and security issues. The update to this feature is known as the Fetch and Render mode, which tells Googlebots to crawl and display pages as browsers would to your audiences.