Checks / Links, canonical and speed
Pages cannot be revalidated
None of the sampled pages sends an ETag or Last-Modified header, so a crawler cannot ask whether a page changed and get a short 304 answer. Google's crawling guide recommends it: without it every revisit downloads the whole page and fewer pages get recrawled.
no_validators · Links, canonical and speed · Notice
What to change
Send ETag or Last-Modified on HTML pages and answer a matching If-None-Match or If-Modified-Since with 304 Not Modified. Most web servers and CDNs do this when it is switched on.
How common it is
In the audits of our own sites on 26 Oct 2026 (4 sites): finding judged right on citedby.eu, hexaciv.com.
Source: finding audit 2026-10-26 (English).
About this check
| Check ID | no_validators |
|---|---|
| Report section | Links, canonical and speed |
| Severity | Notice |
| How it is decided | Measured: read directly from the page or the server's response. |
| Added | Before 19 Oct 2026 (versions 1 and 2), or a site-wide check with no version date yet |
| Status | Measured in every report |
| Report gives the code | No, the fix is described in words |
Related checks
- Broken internal links
- Canonical points to a broken or redirecting URL
- Redirect loop
- Canonical points to a noindex page
- Canonical points to another page
- Pages refuse or do not answer our crawler
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