Final Thoughts

Patrick Hathaway Sitebulb

Last year's JavaScript SEO study revealed a skills gap in the industry.

We've done a lot to try and address this: an industry-leading, expert-led JavaScript SEO training course by the fabulous Gray Dot team (in partnership with Women in Tech SEO). The course is completely free and open to anyone, and we're now nearing 4000 SEOs who have benefited from the training.

It's a brilliant course, and we hoped it would help encourage the 'powers that be' to do their bit as well.

Alas, despite some initial momentum following the publishing of our report last year, Google have done nothing to assist in terms of their documentation on JavaScript SEO - which remains primarily aimed at developers rather than SEOs themselves.

And when it comes to AI, it's infininitely more opaque. There's no ChatGPT equivalent of the URL Inspection Tool in Search Console to see how pages get rendered. Documentation across the AI platforms is sketchy at best, and at worst - intentionally misleading.

While the impact of integrated browsers like OpenAI's new Atlas remains to be seen, it does feel like a step in the right direction in terms of the impact of rendered content on AI understanding. But as long as these technologies rely on LLMs trained on content that is stripped back to plain text, SEOs will have to be increasingly on-guard when it comes to JavaScript and how it impacts page content.