The low text-to-HTML ratio means that you have more code in the page source than the original human human-readable text.
For example, you are reading this text in English here which is referred to as text while when you go to the view source of this page you would find plenty of technical code which is normally called HTML
What is the page size limit for googlebot crawlers
Googlebot only processes the first 15MB of a page’s content. While most pages don’t exceed this size (average HTML is ~30kB), large files may see content after 15MB ignored. To avoid this, externalise data URIs, scripts, and CSS. Use your browser’s Developer Tools to check page size. Read more
What is the Benefit of Fixing it?
Faster Page Load: More code increases rendering time, slowing down page speed. Optimized pages load faster and can rank higher.
Improved Content: While content doesn’t need to be lengthy, thin content can hurt user engagement. Tools like SEMrush flag low text-to-HTML ratios to highlight content that may need enhancement.
How to Fix Low text to HTML issue
Increase the text and number of words if needed: You can increase the word count on your page however it is not something that is required. For example, a contact page may not be needed to look like a blog page so in that case this would be fine.
Reduce the code: Double-check the code because sometimes we can optimize the code. Removing inline style and script code and hosting to separate files can help reduce the code without removing any feature.
In general, we don’t need to worry about a low-text-to-HTML ratio because it is not what Google looks for however as good quality sites have so many good things in them. So it is better to tap into every opportunity available to improve site quality.
Here is a reference video by Google search advocate John Mueller on low-text-to-HTML term.
