Server-side rendering vs client-side for product pages — does Google care?

Server-side rendering vs client-side for product pages — does Google care?

'Q: Our headless store renders prices and stock in JavaScript. Is that an SEO problem?'

Short answer: Google can render JS, but anything critical (price, availability, schema, key copy) should be in the server HTML — client-side rendering delays or drops it.

The longer version: Google renders in a second wave that can lag the initial crawl by days, and it sometimes fails on heavy JS. If your price and 'in stock' only appear after client-side hydration, your Product schema may be read empty — no rich results, stale availability.

The fix isn't 'no JavaScript.' It's SSR (or static/prerender) for the SEO-critical layer: title, description, price, stock, schema, and main body in the raw HTML response. Hydrate the interactive bits (cart, variant swaps) client-side after.

Example: test with GSC's URL Inspection 'View crawled page' — if price and JSON-LD are missing from the rendered HTML, you're losing rich results.

Rule of thumb: SSR the facts Google must read, CSR the clicks users perform.

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