Google unable to load all page resources which is causing script errors and may be hurting our SEO

Question

We just came to the fact that most of our websites have the same errors, but we don't know how to solve it.

https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly

It looks like some scripts on the websites doesn't get included. We think this has an impact on our organic SEO results. We tried the steps on the Google mobile-friendly test, but no results. We've been searching for the past week now, but still havent found a solution.

Any suggestions? Please let us know!

The error:

Page partially loaded

Not all resources page can be loaded. This may affect the way Google sees and interprets your page. Fix availability problems for sources that may affect how Google interprets your page. ''

Solution 1

When you use this test, note that many ad tracking pixels/scripts (even Google's pixels and Doubleclick's pixels (Google owns Doubleclick)) may be blocked by their own robots.txt file that you cannot control. I've seen this first hand in one of my own sites -- Google blocked their own Doubleclick pixel from being scanned by the Googlebot. You have to ask yourself, "The Googlebot is for identifying content on your page, not following pixel trackers. Even Google's own tracking pixels are blocking its own Googlebot. So, why should I care if it's the pixel trackers being blocked?" And I see this also with Facebook's pixel, too.

However, if it's a robots.txt file that you control, and doesn't have anything to do with pixel tracking, then it's likely something that you need to address. Now, if you have a membership-only portion of your website, or an admin-only portion of your website, and it is linked from the homepage, then you might consider link-cloaking or nofollow link attributes so that the Googlebot doesn't try to follow that in your page. However, one has to ask if Google wants you to allow the Googlebot past a member- or admin-only section of your website, which is likely no in my opinion.

This is my opinion, however. Unless we can actually get Google's SEO Engineering Team to respond, we're kind of groping in the dark and just have to use our best common sense intuition here.

Solution 2

"Page partially loaded" must give you a list of resources googlebot wasn't able to load. Start with verifying those resources for accessibility.

• Next, try this: Run the mobile-freindly test two times. First, http:// version, then, https:// version. This is to check whether the https version of the site is trying to load resources from the http version and vice versa. Between the two tests, if you see a difference in number of resources not loaded, zone in on those resources.

• To get a better view into what's being loaded and when, test the site on gtmetrix.com. This will give you the resources loaded in chronological order, and also in waterfall format.

• On the code front, reduce the number of javascripts. I looked at the source of one of the sites and I see near 20 javascript includes. That's a lot of http requests from the same domain. Add to that the requests for images, css, fonts etc.Try to merge the js and css files into one or two files each.

Solution 3

Googlebot will be able to read a lot of Javascript, but not all of it. If your robots.txt file is setup to allow the crawling of your .js files, then it is likely that your javascript is too complex for Google to fully render it.

As a result, you may have to keep testing out different versions of your javascript with the mobile friendly test to determine a version that Google can correctly process. The more complex your javascript is, the more likely it will be that Google cannot read it. Try simplifying your Javascript as best as you can.

Comments

[Stephen Ostermiller]

This is often cause by those scripts being disallowed in robots.txt. On a WordPress site, disallowing wp-content can cause those problems. Your robots.txt looks fine to me though, at least now. Have you changed it recently?

[Goran Usljebrka]

Did you get to the bottom of this by now? We are having similar problems on dozens of websites. Every test gives different results, sometimes it loads everything, sometimes it fails to load few resources, css, js or images and then it triggers an error and send email about not mobile friendly.

[Pmpr]

This does not address the question well. I am having the exact same problem with Google's Mobile Friendly Test tool, reporting resources could not be loaded listing 10 js & jpg files, I can download by myself without any problem!

[Pmpr]

I dont think so, as I am having the exact same problem with a list of 10 js & jpg files. So, considering your explanation, what about jpg files.