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Google Search Console Now Ranks Blocked Resources by Severity

Next time you run a page through Google’s Fetch and Render tool you’re going to get a more detailed breakdown of what’s being blocked.

Google Search Console, formerly Webmaster Tools, has a feature where you can render your website as Google sees it to get an idea if the search engine is able to see everything.

It’s not uncommon for a website to have blocked resources, which are items on the site that Google is not able to access for whatever reason.

Google’s Fetch and Render tool has always been able to identify blocked resources. The problem was that not all blocked resources are equally as important to fix, and there was no easy way of knowing the severity of each.

When you run a page of your website through Google’s Page Speed Insights tool, for example, it delivers a breakdown of what is slowing down your page. These items are sorted by critical, somewhat important, etc.

Now Google’s Fetch and Render tool has similar functionality, ranking the severity of the blocked resources on your page so you know what is most important to fix. In addition, the tool will let you know approximately how much of the page is affected by the blocked resource.

The improvements to the tool were announced on Google+ this week by Google’s Webmaster Trends analyst, John Mueller, along with some screenshots of what the updates look like in action.

The Fetch and Render tool allows you to analyze one page at a time — for a big picture look at your whole site you’re going to want to check out the Blocked Resources report.

Image Credit: antb / Shutterstock.com

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SEJ STAFF Matt G. Southern Senior News Writer at Search Engine Journal

Matt G. Southern, Senior News Writer, has been with Search Engine Journal since 2013. With a bachelor’s degree in communications, ...

Google Search Console Now Ranks Blocked Resources by Severity

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