What is Google Lighthouse?

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could see your website through Google’s eyes?

We all know the fine details of Google’s algorithm are a closely kept secret. At the same time, we have a lot of information about the aspects Google deems important when judging a website.

What’s more, Google offers us a host of free tools designed to help us improve our websites—and one such tool is Google Lighthouse.

One ranking factor we know is becoming more and more critical is page experience, and Google Lighthouse could be the tool you need to make sure your website is performing in this area and many more.

Google Lighthouse is a free tool that provides powerful insights to help improve your website. By generating a Lighthouse report, you can assess any web page’s page experience and access valuable tips to improve its performance.

Google has recently increased emphasis on-page experience, including adding a new set of Core Web Vital signals. The signals break down how a user experiences your page, and you can see how your website performs in this area through Lighthouse.

Since Lighthouse is a Google application, it could be a great way to see your website in the way that Google might see it, knowing any recommendations come straight from the search engine giant itself.

A great thing about Lighthouse is it gives you actionable insights while being simple to use. In just a few clicks, you can get detailed page experience information, providing powerful insights into improving performance.

With more than 3.5 billion searches a day, Google is by far the most popular search engine. So, being able to see how it views and measures your website is extremely useful.

What Metrics Does Google Lighthouse Measure?

Each Lighthouse report has five categories: performance, accessibility, best practices, SEO, and progressive web app. Google has confirmed that aspects such as load speed and mobile experience factor into its algorithm, so these metrics may give you the ability to see how you’re performing in these crucial areas.

With a clear 1-100 grading system, Lighthouse allows you to audit your pages and find areas for improvement. You can expand each section to get in-depth insights and find places where you can quickly improve your page, as shown in the screenshot below.

Once you’ve implemented the changes, you can then check back with Lighthouse to determine if they have improved your score.

For example, if you expand on “performance,” you can find data directly linked to core web vitals such as time to interactive and first contentful paint.

These metrics give you an idea of how fast your page loads and how quickly it is perceived to load. In other words, it’s not just about how quickly the entire page loads; it’s …read more

Source:: Kiss Metrics Blog