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January 21, 2025 Development

Javascript and Google Search

Javascript and Google Search

Google has made significant strides in its ability to crawl and render JavaScript-heavy pages. However, it remains a two-wave process — HTML is crawled first, JavaScript is rendered later — and this gap can cause indexing delays for dynamic content.

The Two-Wave Crawl

When Googlebot visits a page, it first processes the raw HTML response (Wave 1). JavaScript execution is deferred to a second queue — Wave 2 — which can take days or weeks.

Practical Recommendations

  • Use server-side rendering for any content that needs to rank
  • Avoid lazy-loading critical above-the-fold content via JS
  • Test with Google's URL Inspection tool
  • Monitor Google Search Console for crawl anomalies