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New: Google Search Console Fetch & Render Shows Severity Of Blocked Resources

Google added a new feature to the blocked resources report in the fetch and render tool within the Google Search Console.

Barry Schwartz on November 10, 2015 at 8:52 am

Google has added a new feature to the Google Search Console this morning that shows the “severity” of blocked content within the Fetch & Render tool. The new addition to the blocked resources section of the fetch and render tool now shows you how important it is that a resource (e.g., image, script, CSS file, JavaScript file) is being blocked.

The “severity” column shows High, Medium and Low warnings for each resource that is blocked. Your goal is to make sure that you are not blocking any resources from GoogleBot or that any blocked resources have low severity status.

Here is a screen shot of the warnings from my account. Notice that most the resource warnings that are blocked are low and from third-party ads or scripts on the site:

google-blocked-severity-screen-shot-large-1447159736

John Mueller of Google said on Google+, where he announced this feature, that blocking resources “sometimes plays a big role in how Google’s able to render & index a page for search.”

Google has been asking webmasters to stop blocking GoogleBot from accessing your web resources for years and years. As Google becomes better at indexing JavaScript, and AJAX needs to understand mobile sites and how your users actually see your site, Google needs more and more access to your resources to interpret your web site and how it renders.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.