HTML file size exceeds Google's 2MB limit

This means that the URL in question is an internal HTML page whose uncompressed file size exceeds 2MB (2,097,152 bytes), which is the maximum amount of data Googlebot will crawl for any supported file type.

Why is this important?

When crawling for Google Search, Googlebot will only crawl the first 2MB of a supported file type. Any content beyond this 2MB limit is silently ignored - Googlebot does not report an error, it simply stops reading the file at the 2MB mark.

This has significant SEO consequences:

• Lost content: Important text content positioned towards the end of the HTML source may never be indexed by Google.

• Broken internal links: Links in the HTML beyond the 2MB mark will not be discovered or followed, meaning linked pages may not be crawled.

• Missing structured data: Schema.org markup or JSON-LD blocks placed after the 2MB threshold will be invisible to Google, which could cause rich results to disappear.

The 2MB limit applies to the uncompressed response body. Even if the page is served with gzip or Brotli compression (which reduces transfer size), Googlebot evaluates the size of the fully decompressed content.

Note: This limit does not include resources referenced in the HTML (e.g. images, videos, CSS, JavaScript - these are fetched separately).

What does the Hint check?

This Hint will trigger for any internal URL which returns a 200 status, has a content type of HTML, and has an uncompressed file size greater than 2MB (2,097,152 bytes).

How do you resolve this issue?

As a Critical issue, this requires immediate high-priority attention. HTML pages exceeding Google's 2MB limit risk having significant portions of their content completely invisible to search engines.

The first thing to establish is which pages are affected, how far over the limit they have gone, and whether there is key content beyond the 2MB threshold that is important for indexing. You may need to work with a developer in order to understand whether or not this is the case, and if it is, to work with them to understand why the page is so large.

Investigate the cause of the large file size

Common causes include:

• Inline CSS or JavaScript: Large blocks of CSS or JavaScript embedded directly in the HTML instead of being loaded as external resources.

• Excessive DOM size: Pages with extremely large numbers of HTML elements, such as very long product listings, comment threads, or data tables rendered entirely on the server.

• Inline SVGs or Base64-encoded images: Image data embedded directly in the HTML source.

• Duplicated or unnecessary markup: Repeated blocks of HTML from template issues or CMS plugins.

Reduce the HTML file size

Depending on the cause, consider the following approaches:

• Move inline CSS and JavaScript to external files: This not only reduces HTML size but also allows browsers to cache these resources separately.

• Implement pagination or lazy loading: For pages with large amounts of content (e.g. long product listings or comment threads), break the content across multiple pages or load it dynamically.

• Remove inline image data: Replace Base64-encoded images and inline SVGs with references to external image files.

• Audit and clean up the HTML template: Review the page template for unnecessary markup, redundant wrapper elements, or bloated CMS output.

• Ensure critical content appears early in the source: As a defensive measure, make sure the most important content, links, and structured data appear within the first 2MB of the HTML source.

Verify the fix

After making changes, re-crawl the affected URLs with Sitebulb to confirm the file size has been reduced below the 2MB threshold (to avoid running a full crawl on larger sites, consider doing this via URL List mode).

Further Reading

• How Googlebot accesses your site

• Google Webmasters thread where issue was initially discovered (low-key fascinating!)