Pre rendering, site visibilty google crawlbots

Support
1

Hello, please give me your thoughts on pre-rendering, my developer is currently trying to sell me SEO services for domain (nationalremovalandstorage1) https://nationalremovalsandstorage.co.uk/ which i am sure to engage with in the next few months anyway……however im very concerned the site has ‘dropped off a cliff’ with google search console, originally new pages were index showing unique meta data and now all of a sudden before Christmas the data has become generic such as;

National Removals and Storage
https://nationalremovalsandstorage.co.uk › house-remo…
National Removals and Storage. Please enable JavaScript to use this website. Call us: 0800 047 2607.
National Removals and Storage

National Removals and Storage
https://nationalremovalsandstorage.co.uk › office-remo…
National Removals and Storage. Please enable JavaScript to use this website. Call us: 0800 047 2607.
National Removals and Storage

National Removals and Storage
https://nationalremovalsandstorage.co.uk › packing
National Removals and Storage. Please enable JavaScript to use this website. Call us: 0800 047 2607.

I don’t understand what has changed. Ive been advised this is a pre-rendering issue and have now enabled Netlify pre-render plug and re-deployed……no changes so far, and im unsure if the site is now pre-rendered or not.

How do I test if this is effective, and if it is not, can anyone suggest the next steps?

TIA

2

The site is being deployed manually, so the pre-rendering extension would not work. But yes, your site needs prerendering and you can verify it by running the following in terminal:

curl -D - -A "googlebot" "https://nationalremovalsandstorage.co.uk/"

That should show you the HTML response for your site. In the body it only shows:

<body>
    <noscript>
      <div style="padding: 20px; text-align: center;">
        <h1>National Removals and Storage</h1>
        <p>Please enable JavaScript to use this website.</p>
        <p>Call us: <a href="tel:08000472607">0800 047 2607</a></p>
      </div>
    </noscript>
    <div id="root"></div>
  </body>

which should instead show some prerendered content if prerendering is working.

3

Thank you so much for the reply, so i have to automate deployment to have use of pre rendering? My developer is currently looking at your response.

4

Yes. You will have to use git deploys.

7

Hi, the site is now periodically deployed via GitHub. Can you take a quick look, if possible, to see if the pre-rendering issue still exists? The pre rendering extension is enabled.

8

(looks like I forgot to hit send here, so this message was still in my drafts)

It is trying to prerender now:

curl -D - -A "googlebot" "https://nationalremovalsandstorage.co.uk/"

HTTP/2 500
age: 8
cache-control: no-cache
cache-status: "Netlify Durable"; fwd=bypass, "Netlify Edge"; fwd=miss
cache-status: "Netlify Durable"; fwd=bypass, "Netlify Edge"; fwd=miss;detail=p1
content-type: text/plain;charset=UTF-8
date: Thu, 22 Jan 2026 17:02:29 GMT
netlify-vary: query
server: Netlify
strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000
vary: Accept-Encoding
x-content-type-options: nosniff
x-nf-request-id: 01KFKAGCQ2HFSGDJ2ZJPQ2Y58Y

Prerender failed.

But it’s failing. Checking the logs here: Function details | Functions | nationalremovalandstorage1 | Netlify, there are still no clear details:

image
image2194×482 133 KB

9

Hey, I can see why this is stressing you out—what you’re describing isn’t normal, and you’re right to question it.

Those “Please enable JavaScript…” results basically mean Google isn’t seeing your actual website content. It’s only seeing a fallback version, which is why all your titles and descriptions suddenly look generic. So yeah, this does point toward a rendering issue.

Now about pre-rendering… your developer isn’t wrong, but just turning on a Netlify plugin doesn’t guarantee anything. It sounds fixed, but a lot of times it’s either misconfigured or not even running properly.

Let’s keep this simple

First thing I’d do (takes 10 seconds):

:backhand_index_pointing_right: Open your site → right click → View Page Source

If you still see “Please enable JavaScript…” → it’s NOT fixed
If you see proper content (text, services, headings) → then it’s working

That one check will tell you more than anything else.

Why this likely happened

Since you said it dropped before Christmas, my guess:

Something changed in the site build or deployment
Or rendering broke after an update

Google then stopped seeing your real content… and rankings tanked.

About Netlify specifically

With Netlify, common problems are:

Plugin added but not actually running
Pages not included in pre-render
Googlebot not getting the pre-rendered version
JavaScript overwriting everything again after load

So yeah… it can look fixed, but still be broken underneath.

What I’d do next (honestly)
Check page source (this is your truth test)
If it’s still wrong → don’t wait months

Ask your developer straight:

“Can you prove Googlebot is getting pre-rendered HTML?”

If they can’t show that clearly, something’s off.

Straight answer

This isn’t just an SEO tweak issue—it’s technical.
Until Google can actually read your content again, nothing else will really help.