Google made another change to the JavaScript SEO documentation help document to explain and clarify JavaScript execution on non-200 HTTP status codes.

The change. Google wrote, “All pages with a 200 HTTP status code are sent to the rendering queue, no matter whether JavaScript is present on the page.” “If the HTTP status code is non-200 (for example, on error pages with 404 status code), rendering might be skipped,” Google added.

Google also clarified that Googlebot queues all pages with a 200 HTTP status code for rendering.

Here is the section that was updated:

Googlebot Javascript 200Googlebot Javascript 200

Google explained, “While pages with a 200 HTTP status code are sent to rendering, this might not be the case for pages with a non-200 HTTP status code.”

Other changes. Google made a number of changes to the JavaScript SEO documentation this week including:

Why we care. This means you should ensure these pages return a 200 status code so Google does not skip rendering them. If Google skips rendering, it will likely lead to poor ranking of that page in Google Search.


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Barry SchwartzBarry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.

In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the “US Search Personality Of The Year,” you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O’Clock.

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