Did you ever run the Google Search Console URL inspection tool, and click on the view crawled page link, and then see a blank screenshot under the screenshot tab? It might not be an issue, says Gary Illyes of Google. As long as you see the HTML you want Google to see in the HTML tab, you are fine.
The other day, I covered how the Search Console's screenshot view is what Googlebot sees but Everett Sizemore responded that even if that is blank, it can be fine if your HTML is fully in the HTML tab.
Gary Illyes from Google replied to that comment on LinkedIn saying, "tis correct: if it's in the html you're all good (I.e. no need to have JavaScript bring in the content)."
He said that "rendering sometimes fails /shrug" and as long as it is in the HTML, you are fine. But he added, if the rendering consistently fails, there may be an issue.
Here is what Gary posted:
tis correct: if it's in the html you're all good (I.e. no need to have JavaScript bring in the content). rendering sometimes fails /shrug, but if you consistently see in SC that rendering failed you might have a problem. (I thought there's console output to see if it failed?) That's why it's good habit to have the content in the initial html: THAT can't fail.
Clark Taylor then added:
Everett Sizemore personally if something is preventing your content from rendering quickly, I’d worry about it. What I heard Gary say in the the past was related to code that’s not visible because it’s behind a tab or accordian on mobile experiences.
In which Gary Illyes responded:
re: hidden vs not hidden, that's a whole lot of different kind of worms. I don't know what the current state is and I'm on vacation so can't really look it up (and I'll forget about this by the time I get back to work (I'm old)) but your best bet is to the important stuff in the HTML and if you wanna be super thorough/cautious, have it NOT hidden behind tabs and whatnots. For what it's worth I see our accordion-hidden content rank just fine right now.
So don't freak out if the screenshot is blank, check the HTML tab and make sure all you want Googlebot to see is in that HTML tab.
Here is a screenshot showing you when in Search Console you can see this, but it is under the URL Inspection Tool, when you plug in a specific URL:
Forum discussion at LinkedIn.
