Google: Not All Googlebots Use Same Rendering Engine & Render JavaScript

Feb 17, 2023 - 7:41 am 0 by

Crochet Google Bot Spider by Lizzi Sassman of Google

John Mueller of Google said not all Googlebots use the same rendering engine, in fact, not all Googlebots need to do rendering John added. So while the main desktop and mobile Google search crawlers, the main Googlebots, do rendering and render JavaScript pretty well, not all the Googlebots do or need to.

John said this on Mastodon when he was asked, "Does that mean all the crawlers behind these user agent strings always use the same render engine for .js content?"

John replied, "definitely not all crawlers, or even the ones documented - for example site verification wouldn't need to do rendering. We don't separate that out in the docs. The desktop/mobile ones for search would though, since they need to see the pages as they are loaded in browsers."

So just because it is a Googlebot, it does not mean it renders your pages fully, partially or at all.

Forum discussion at Mastodon.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Google Search Volatility

More Details

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Google

Google Image Search Collections Save To Suggested By Al

Sep 16, 2026 - 7:51 am
Google

Google Search Product Listings Tests Linking Directly To Merchant Site

Sep 16, 2026 - 7:41 am
Google Ads

New Information On Google Ads Multi-Source Conversions Beta

Sep 16, 2026 - 7:31 am
Bing Search

Bing Tests Shopping Filters On Left Sidebar

Sep 16, 2026 - 7:21 am
Google Ads

Google Ads Spend Benchmarks Report Compares Your Competitors

Sep 16, 2026 - 7:11 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google: Google Search Console AI Position Reporting Will Evolve Over Time

Sep 16, 2026 - 7:05 am
Previous Story: Google Mobile Tests Search Menu On Left Side Bar