Google explains JavaScript execution on non-200 HTTP status codes

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:

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:

• Google clarifies canonicalization with JavaScript
• Google says don’t use JavaScript to generate a noindex tag in the original page code

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.