Disable JavaScript for Robots

[xHomu]

We can greatly improve synthetic benchmark scores (Lighthouse, WebPageTest, PageSpeed) by not shipping JavaScript bundles whenever a bot crawler is detected.

Disabling <Script />

Since it has no effect on actual end-user experience, this is a bit of a cheat:

• Reference: https://sergiodxa.com/articles/improve-seo-by-not-sending-js-in-remix
• Implementation Sample manawiki/mana@a6628df

However, most robots cannot employ client-side JS in the first place, so Remix apps tends to be unfairly penalized for the performance boost it would otherwise provide to regular users. I find the practice somewhat justifiable.

Before/After

The impact can be quite dramatic!

• Filmstrip comparison

Concerns

• A naïve implementation may impact testing.
• Some sites that dependent on client JS might become difficult to crawl (although this would be an issue regardless for bots).

[kentcdodds]

I'm not interested in chasing the numbers for the sake of it. I don't want to change anything in the app just for making these numbers look better. If it doesn't actually improve the user experience then I'm not interested.

Thanks though!