Starting in the second quarter of 2018, Google’s search engine crawlers will begin rendering JavaScript-based webpages without the assistance of the AJAX crawling scheme.
For site owners, this means it will no longer be necessary to provide pre-rendered versions of these pages to Googlebot.
Currently, Googlebot relies on the AJAX crawling scheme to render JavaScript-based webpages when pre-rendered versions are not available.
Thanks to advancements by Google’s engineers in rendering JavaScript, Googlebot is now capable of rendering these pages natively.
In the second quarter of 2018, Google will transition from relying on the AJAX crawling scheme to fully utilizing Googlebot for rendering.
### Here’s exactly what will change
The AJAX crawling scheme currently operates by accepting pages with either a “#!” in the URL or a “fragment meta tag,” and then crawling them with an “?_escaped_fragment_=” URL.
At present, for Googlebot to crawl the page, the “escaped” URL must be a fully rendered version of the “#!” URL.
When Google makes the switch in the second quarter of 2018, Googlebot will start rendering the “#!” URL on its own. These URLs will continue to be supported, but site owners will no longer need to provide pre-rendered versions.
According to Google, there shouldn’t be any significant changes to AJAX-crawling websites. If any issues arise, Google will notify individual sites directly.
