Does important markup fall beyond the fetch budget?
It compares decompressed HTML size and important markup offsets with a fixed byte budget.
What Check Engine measures
The cap is 2097152 bytes, with 1024 bytes reserved for headers. Successful HTML pages larger than the remaining budget are checked. Important tags found strictly beyond that budget produce high severity. An oversized document with no identified tags beyond it produces medium severity. The header allowance is fixed for every response. For example, the same 1024-byte header allowance applies to each measured HTML response.
Successful HTML responses supply document size and recorded offsets of important markup. Images, stylesheets and other separate files are not added to this HTML-byte comparison.
How to read the result
Important markup beyond the read budget is high severity. An oversized document without identified lost markup is medium. A truncated response leaves its full size unknown. Keep the saved limit beside the size when reviewing it.
Why it matters
A large document can put important tags beyond the read budget. The check compares their recorded positions with that budget. Review the actual document order before choosing what to reduce.
How to fix it
Inspect the document source and the locations named in the finding. Reduce excessive inline scripts, style blocks or repeated markup, and keep essential head tags early. Retest the decompressed HTML after changing the template. Review the actual source order rather than relying on the visual location of content in a browser.
Googlebot stops reading at 2MB
What we found in field audits
Problems in Crawlability & indexing were found on 12 of the 14 sites we audited. These are area totals. Read the field-audit method.
Method note
backend/seo_engine/checks/indexability.py, googlebot_byte_cap, revision 0bb8e8d3.
Common questions
What is reserved for headers in the HTML fetch budget?
Each response has 1024 bytes set aside for headers. The remaining budget is compared with decompressed HTML and tag positions.
Are images included in the HTML byte-cap comparison?
No. The document comparison leaves out other separate files, including images and stylesheets. It measures decompressed HTML.
Is oversized HTML worse when important markup lies beyond the budget?
Yes. Important markup beyond the limit is high severity. Without identified lost tags, the oversized-document result is medium.