Why Your React Site Is Invisible to Google (And How to Fix It)
Built your website in React but it's not showing up on Google? Client-side rendering is almost certainly the cause. Here's a clear explanation of the problem and the solution.
You launched your React website. It looks great. But weeks later, you're still nowhere on Google.
You check Google Search Console and find that most of your pages aren't indexed. Or worse — they're indexed but showing almost no content in the preview.
This is one of the most common problems we see, and the cause is almost always the same: client-side rendering.
What Google Actually Sees
When Googlebot crawls a client-side rendered React app, here's what it typically receives:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>My App</title>
</head>
<body>
<div id="root"></div>
<script src="/assets/index-abc123.js"></script>
</body>
</html>
That's it. Your homepage headline, your service descriptions, your about page — all of it is inside that JavaScript bundle. Googlebot has to execute the JavaScript to see any of it.
Google does process JavaScript, but it's resource-intensive and deprioritised. Pages often get crawled in a "second wave" that can take days or weeks. And if your JavaScript has any errors or loads too slowly, the content may never be indexed at all.
The Fix: Serve Real HTML
The solution is to make sure your server sends actual content in the initial HTML response — not a blank page with a script tag.
There are two main approaches:
Static Site Generation (SSG)
Your pages are pre-rendered at build time and served as static HTML from a CDN. When Googlebot visits, it gets your full content immediately.
This is the right choice for most marketing sites, blogs, and portfolios.
Server-Side Rendering (SSR)
Pages are rendered on the server for each request. The browser (and Googlebot) receives complete HTML every time.
This is better for pages with dynamic, user-specific content.
Migrating Without Rebuilding
If your site is built with Vite or Create React App, you don't need to rebuild it from scratch. Next.js uses React — your components transfer over almost unchanged.
The main things that change are:
- Routing: from
react-router-domto Next.js file-based routing - Data fetching: from
useEffecttoasyncserver components orgenerateStaticParams - Images: from
<img>to<Image>for automatic optimisation
A typical 10–15 page site takes us 1–2 weeks to migrate. The before and after on Lighthouse scores is usually dramatic.
Is This Your Problem?
Here's a quick test. Go to Google and search:
site:yourdomain.com
If fewer pages show up than you have on your site, or if the snippets look empty or generic, your content isn't being indexed properly.
Get in touch — we run a free crawl audit as part of every project conversation. We'll tell you exactly what Google sees when it visits your site.