Google recently announced a new Webmaster Tools feature that allows you to see a website through Googlebot’s eyes. The Fetch and Render function will crawl a URL site and grab external files, such as images and JavaScript, then put it all back together (rendering) to show you how your site looks to Google. This powerful new tool will cut time spent troubleshooting a website’s impaired performance.
The Problem: Poor Website Performance
Just as in medicine, you can diagnose symptoms of poor website performance by looking at specific aspects and comparing their functioning to healthy, best practice results. When issues are identified, you can tweak individual things such as robots.txt, scripting, flash, iframes, and non-indexable text until overall performance improves. Although this methodology may work, it’s not the most efficient way to fix technical website issues, especially at the page level.
The Solution: Google Webmaster Tools Fetch and Render
Even the cleverest SEO expert may have a hard time telling you exactly what Google can and cannot read. Using the Fetch and Render function, you can manually submit a page for a full technical review of SEO symptoms. This feature also provides a snapshot of what Google can actually see on your page so you can determine if text or images are hidden. Instead of replacing all of the script on your website, you can identify specific script that Google is having trouble reading. This holistic view empowers you to be the SEO expert and to outline the most efficient and accurate remedy for technical issues with exact recommendations for improved website performance.
