Client-side-only content fails render at a 23% rate

Client-side-only content fails render at a 23% rate

Across 156 JS-heavy domains, content injected only after hydration was missing from the rendered DOM snapshot 23.4% of the time on first render pass.

— Pages with render-gap: 31.0% ▓▓▓░░░░░░░
— Median render delay to queue: 9 days
— p90 render delay: 27 days
— Indexed-but-empty pages (median/site): 190

The mistake: shipping primary copy and links behind a fetch that fires post-load. The render queue is budget-limited; some pages get the raw HTML indexed with no body.

Fix: server-render or pre-render critical content and internal links. Keep the <1s-visible payload in initial HTML. Cohort that moved copy server-side cut empty-index pages by ↓ 81% and trimmed render lag to a 2-day median.

So what: if it's not in the HTML, treat it as optional to Google.