The world of SEO can feel like a game of telephone. One person says something, it gets repeated, misinterpreted, and before you know it, a supposed “fact” is being thrown around as gospel. I’ve seen it time and time again, especially when it comes to how Google “sees” a website.
A common refrain, particularly from the Tech SEO community, is that Googlebot renders every page with the same level of scrutiny as a human user. The argument goes: Googlebot is based on Chromium, therefore it’s a full-fledged browser, and it meticulously evaluates your UI, UX, and code. This leads to the idea that broken HTML, messy code, or slow-loading JavaScript will tank your rankings.
But let’s pull back the curtain on this. The underlying assumption is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. While it’s true that Googlebot is Chromium-based, it’s not a human with a browser. It’s an information extraction tool, and its primary goal is simple: get the text.
Think about it this way: when I worked on Google product support, the consistent message was that Googlebot fetches a page as text. If it detects JavaScript, it has the ability to render it on the spot, but that’s a capability, not a default behavior for every single page. The goal isn’t to admire your beautiful code; it’s to parse the content as efficiently as possible.
This brings me to my core point: Google doesn’t care about your code. It will process any version of HTML, even broken or incomplete versions. Why? Because the machine’s focus isn’t on code perfection, but on text extraction. You could upload a text file, name it with an .html extension, and put nothing but <body> tags in it, and Google would still extract the text just fine.
The idea that Google “evaluates” code is a philosophical position, often rooted in the Tech SEO mindset, which needs to justify its existence by creating complexity. They convince themselves, and others, that a “code assessment tool” is part of the process. But that’s a flawed comparison. Parsing HTML for text is not the same as a detailed code analysis. Errors in your HTML calls rarely affect the core function of text extraction.
So much of the SEO industry is built on this kind of conjecture. We hear about “signals” that are largely undefined, yet are presented as the working capital for new SEO functionalities. These signals are the “icing on the cake” that don’t actually exist. This is how bloggers and speakers position themselves as visionary leaders, ahead of the curve.
Think about the endless “future of SEO” talks that never seem to arrive. The speakers are never held accountable. We’ve become accustomed to the idea that SEO is an ever-changing landscape, when in reality, the fundamentals remain remarkably stable.
I’ve worked with the same colleague for over 15 years, and our day-to-day SEO strategy has changed very little. We focus on what works: reducing waste in our tasks and executing faster. If our strategy wasn’t working, we would change it, but the core principles of creating valuable content and ensuring it’s accessible for Google to read have been a constant.
The myth of constant change is a profitable one. It encourages us to bury hours in reading conflicting articles, chasing down supposed new features, and waiting for the next “secret” to be revealed. The problem is, you don’t know which hours to bury, which articles to trust, or how long to wait for a result.
The next time you hear a blanket statement about how Google “does” something, ask yourself: is this based on a clear, verifiable understanding of Google’s goal—which is fetching text—or is it a philosophical position designed to create complexity and a need for more “experts”?
Let’s start holding the industry accountable and focus on what truly matters. After all, you can put text in any of the 57 types of files out there, and HTML is just one of them. 😉
