Sitebulb JavaScript SEO Report

Patrick Hathaway Sitebulb

JavaScript SEO has undergone a revolution in the year since we first did this study.

Why? Because AI is the new hotness, and 'LLM Crawlers' can't render JavaScript.

It sometimes feels that the SEO industry has forgotten we're allowed to talk about anything other than 'optimizing for AI' - the topic dominates LinkedIn feeds, conference agendas, blog posts, webinars, newsletters...

And the justification for such a media blackout is sound - it's the first time in a long time that we've had anything other than Google search to talk about.

AI is new, and it's genuinely different. And whether you like it or loathe it, it really does feel like it will herald a paradigm shift in information retrieval.

The irony is, for all it's newness and hotness, AI is fundamentally reliant on text-based content. Fancy client-side JavaScript not only goes unappreciated by LLM Crawlers, but is in fact invisible to them.

The fundamentals of tech SEO are just as valid for GEO, AIO, AEO (or whatever the kids are calling it these days) and JavaScript rendering is arguably the most important facet.

While this year's study shows that both awareness and understanding of JavaScript SEO are definitely improving, it also reveals a worrying blind-spot on the negative impact of JavaScript content for AI platforms...

- Patrick Hathaway