Martin Splitt
Developer Advocate, Search Relations at Google
Zurich, Switzerland · German
Martin Splitt is a Developer Advocate on Google's Search Relations team, based in Zurich, Switzerland. A software engineer by background who once co-founded his own technology company, he joined Google to help developers and content creators build sites that search engines can genuinely crawl, render, and index. Within the SEO community he is one of the most recognizable technical voices coming out of Google.
His central message to SEOs is concrete: Google indexes the rendered HTML that exists after a page's JavaScript runs, not the raw source, and the quickest way to debug a JavaScript site is to compare the two in Search Console and browser DevTools. He co-hosts Google's Search Off the Record podcast with John Mueller, Gary Illyes, and Lizzi Sassman, and fronts the #AskGooglebot series that answers common SEO questions in short explainers.
Splitt is also an open-web advocate involved with the W3C and the wider JavaScript community, and previously maintained the open-source Rendertron project. He presented Debugging JavaScript Websites at SEO for Paws 3 in March 2025, the SEO Charity conference organised by Anton Shulke and hosted by Olesia Korobka. Away from Search he is a certified dive instructor and underwater photographer.
Key facts about Martin Splitt
- Developer Advocate on Google's Search Relations team in Zurich, focusing on crawling, rendering, indexing, and JavaScript SEO.
- Co-hosts Google's Search Off the Record podcast with John Mueller, Gary Illyes, and Lizzi Sassman.
- Fronts the #AskGooglebot video series on Google Search Central, answering common SEO questions in short explainers.
- A software engineer by background who maintained the open-source Rendertron project while advocating for the open web at Google.
- Presented Debugging JavaScript Websites at SEO for Paws 3 in March 2025, the SEO Charity conference organised by Anton Shulke and hosted by Olesia Korobka.
- A certified dive instructor and underwater photographer outside of his work on Search.
What Martin Splitt is famous for
Martin Splitt is best known for one clear message to SEOs: Google indexes the rendered HTML produced after JavaScript runs, not the source you see in view-source, and most JavaScript SEO problems live in the gap between the two. He co-hosts Search Off the Record and fronts the #AskGooglebot series.
Notable work
- Podcast: Search Off the Record
- Blog: Google Search Central Blog (author)
- Open source: Rendertron
