reach
If it needs JavaScript, it arrives empty
A page that assembles itself in the browser is, to most automated fetches, an empty shell. This is most damaging where it is least expected: in the evidence you link to in order to be checkable.
A site published careful citations to explorers and indexes so its claims could be verified independently. Fetched without JavaScript, one returned ten characters of visible text. The facts were correct and completely unverifiable.
There is a one-step check for this and it needs no tools at all. Put
view-source: in front of any address —
view-source:https://the-page-you-cite — and what appears is exactly
what a machine receives. If the fact you are relying on is not in there,
nobody can check it but you.
Worth doing to every source you cite, and to your own pages. It is also the argument for publishing plain data rather than linking to an application: an application has to run before it says anything, and nothing fetching it will wait.