Google Search Console issue: "This is how Googlebot saw the page" showing part of page being covered up

[ChristianMKG]

Hi everyone!

Kind of a weird question here but I'll ask and see if anyone else has seen this:

In Google Search Console when I do a fetch and render request for a specific site, the fetch and blocked resources all look A-OK.

However, in the render, there's a large grey box (background of navigation) that covers up a significant amount of what is on the page.

Attaching a screenshot.

You can see the text start peeking out below (had to trim for confidentiality reasons). But behind that block of grey IS text. And text that apparently in the fetch part Googlebot does see and can crawl.

My question: is this an issue? Should I be concerned about this visual look? Or no?

Never have experienced an issue like that.

I will say - trying to make a play at a featured snippet and can't seem to have Google display this page's information, despite it being the first result and the query showing a featured snippet of a result #4. I know that it isn't guaranteed for the #1 result but wonder if this has anything to do with why it isn't showing one.

VmIqgFB.png

[NickLeRoy]

Without knowing the URL its really difficult to audit this situation.  My first thought is to ask if you have a pop up that loads when a user comes to your page.  Google could be rendering the popup without its content.  To your point the content on the page is still shown but only behind the popup.

When you look at the actual text cache of the page are you seeing the actual text of the page?  If this is the case I would rely on this more than the rendered version.  Honestly, it could be multiple things but without the URL it really is nearly impossible to tell you why.

[ChristianMKG]

Totally hear you.

Here's a link to the page: https://goo.gl/kZVqE9

Will also say: the cached version of it in Google is also very strange. Almost like CSS not really working.

[NickLeRoy]

Hi Christian, my apologies, i should have noted that.  The CSS does not render in the text cache version.  The value though is that you can see if something is crawlable/displaying properly.  So for instance, if you looked at that cached version and didnt see any of the content on your page, you know you have something stopping the search engines from properly crawaling and indexing the page.

edit. noticing when looking at the link that the full version doesn't show the CSS either. That's a bit weird.  I wouldn't worry about it too much as it seems other pages on your site are rendering properly in the full version.

are you seeing any performance issues with the page or is the concern originally due to just the fact that grey box was displaying in the search/render feature of console?

[ChristianMKG]

No performance issues, other than not capturing the featured snippet despite my best efforts

Really, I'm mostly concerned about the render, as I hadn't seen that in the 10ish years I've been doing SEO.

Seems like, with your great help (thanks so much again!), that it probably isn't actually an issue of any kind that is hindering performance or the ability to capture the featured snippet.

[NickLeRoy]

Good to hear no performance issue. Obviously that is priority number one.   Definitely don't sweat the render.  You might want to refetch and see how it looks. also give it shot with mobile fetch to see if you get anything different.

A lot of us are chasing the position zero snippet.  I didn't look at your site closely but i would start by making sure that every single item (as appropriate) is marked up with schema.org.  That will put you closer to your goal