---
title: Agents see a blank page: text without JavaScript · The Direct Index
url: https://directindex.org/guides/website-blank-without-javascript
---

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Guide

# Agents see a blank page: text without JavaScript

Most crawlers read the HTML a server sends and do not run scripts, or run them with a short budget. If your page is empty until JavaScript draws it, those crawlers see a blank page: no hours, no address, no menu. The scanner reports the amount of text visible without scripts; under 500 characters is the finding.

## How to check

Open your homepage, view the page source (not the inspector) and search for your opening hours. If they are not in the source, they are not visible to crawlers that do not run scripts. From a terminal, `curl -s https://yourbusiness.com/ | wc -c` gives a rough size; a few kilobytes of markup with no words is the sign.

## Where it comes from

| Where your site is built | Where the setting lives, October 2026 |
| --- | --- |
| Wix, Squarespace, Webflow, WordPress with a normal theme | Render on the server. If the finding shows up here, it is usually a cookie or age gate, or a "loading" screen, that hides the content until a script runs. |
| Single-page apps (React, Vue, Angular) built by an agency | The usual cause. Ask for server-side rendering or static export; both are standard options in those frameworks. Until then, put hours, address, phone and a menu link in the HTML shell. |
| Flash-era or image-only sites | The content is in images. A page with the same information as text fixes it. |
| Cookie or age gates | Show the gate on top of the content rather than instead of it, so the content is in the HTML. |

Dashboards move things around. If a name here does not match, search the dashboard for the word in bold.

## The minimum that helps

Even on a scripted site, these three can go in the static HTML: a `title` with your name and city, a [structured-data block](https://directindex.org/guides/structured-data-restaurant) with hours, address and phone, and a plain link to the menu and booking pages. Assistants will take the rest from there.

## Check it

Want the exact character count the crawlers see? Run the [free scanner](https://directindex.org/scan) on your address: the report names each crawler that was refused, what it found for the menu, the structured data and the booking path, and what to fix first. Rescans are free.

## More guides

- [ChatGPT doesn't show my restaurant. Why, and what to do](https://directindex.org/guides/chatgpt-does-not-show-my-restaurant)
- [Am I blocking ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity without knowing?](https://directindex.org/guides/blocking-ai-crawlers-without-knowing)
- [robots.txt for AI agents: who to allow, and how](https://directindex.org/guides/robots-txt-for-ai-agents)
- [My menu is a PDF. Can AI assistants read it?](https://directindex.org/guides/menu-pdf-ai)
- [All guides](https://directindex.org/guides)

Updated 2026-10-14. Dashboard names are as of that date.

#### The Direct Index

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#### For agents

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#### Data

[City data, JSON and Markdown](https://directindex.org/cities)[Sitemap](https://directindex.org/sitemap.xml)

Business listings from OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL. Scores under the same licence.

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