Prerendering

What Prerendering means for your business

Some sites send a nearly empty page that only fills in after scripts run. A prerendered page hands over the finished text from the start. The web.dev guide says crawlers can understand JavaScript, with limits, so we'd check what a page holds before any script runs. A bot that doesn't run scripts sees only that version.

The catch, web.dev says, is that every address needs its own file made ahead of time, which gets hard when you can't predict the addresses, like search results or listings that change often. It also says a prerendered page usually needs more JavaScript before its buttons and forms work, and most of it sits still with scripts off.

Some tools sell a setup that hands bots a saved copy while people get the JavaScript version. Google calls that dynamic rendering, a workaround and not a long-term fix, and points to server-side or static rendering instead. In Chrome, the word also means loading a page someone is likely to click next in a hidden tab, so it opens instantly. That's about speed for visitors and doesn't change what bots read.

If your site looks fine in a browser but its page source is nearly blank, making your pages readable without JavaScript is where we'd start.

Last reviewed October 29, 2026. All terms