Google Unveils ‘Blocked Resources Report’ and Updates Fetch & Render Tool

Google has recently introduced a new Webmaster Tools feature called ‘Blocked Resource Report’. It aims at helping webmasters to find and resolve issues where Googlebot cannot use blocked CSS, linked images, or JavaScript. Blocked resource prevents web pages from rendering correctly, and Google wants to ensure that you are only blocking what you really need/ want to be.

What is a Blocked Resource Report?

The Blocked Resource Report provides the names of the hosts from which your website is using the blocked resources such as CSS, JavaScript, and linked images. By clicking on a row, you will get the list of blocked resources and pages that embed them. It helps you figure out and take care of these issues so that Google can better crawl and index the content present on your website.

Some resources will be hosted on your website, while others will be hosted on others. If you click on a host, you will get a count of web pages on your website affected by each blocked resource. Furthermore; if you click on any blocked resource, you will get a list of web pages that load that resource. By clicking on any web page in a table hosting a blocked resource, you will get directions for unblocking that particular resource.

For evaluating and reducing your list of blocked resources, you can follow the below-mentioned steps:

• First, open the ‘Blocked Resources Report’ in order to find a list of hosts of blocked resources on your website. Now, start with hosts that you own, as you can directly update the robots.txt files if required.
• After this click a host on this report so as to see a blocked resources list from that particular host. Now go through that list and start with those which may affect the layout in a meaningful way. There is no need to bother with less important resources (tracking pixels or counters).
• For each resource that affects layout, click to see the page list that uses it. After this click on any page of the list and follow the instructions of the pop-up to view the difference and for updating the blocking robots.txt file. Now, fetch and render after each change in order to confirm that the resource is appearing.
• Continue updating resources for a host until you have enabled the access of Googlebot to all important blocked resources.
• Now move on to the hosts that you do not own. If the resources have a strong visual impact, you can contact the webmaster of these sites and ask them to unblock the resource to Googlebot. In addition to this, you can consider removing the dependency of your page on that resource.

What is the new update in Fetch & Render Tool?

The fetch and render tool is specially designed to show how Google sees your web page. The update of Fetch and Render will show how the blocked resources matter. When you request a URL to be fetched and rendered, it will show screenshots rendered both as a typical user and as Googlebot, so that you get a better grasp on the problems.

This new feature is definitely beneficial for webmasters, as it makes it easier for them to spot and then unblock resources used by their website.