Do Google’s Lighthouse Scores Affect SEO?
Google Lighthouse is one of the best tools for
measuring web core vitals and other performance metrics. It allows you to
perform an audit on your website and gives you a score for different
categories.
New to this update and have no idea whether the lighthouse’s scores affect SEO or not? Here’s the complete guide to Google’s Lighthouse performance metrics. Scroll down the page and get all your queries resolved in no time.
A Brief Overview of Google’s Lighthouse
Developed by Google, Lighthouse is an
open-source website audit tool that renders scores in five areas, including
Performance, Progressive Web App, Best Practices, Accessibility, and SEO.
This tool uses emulated data (lab data) to run the performance test. The data will be then collected within a controlled environment with predefined network settings and devices to debug the performance issues.
Lighthouse Performance Metrics
Lighthouse’s performance score is made of six
metrics with each contributing a percentage of the total performance score.
●
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP):
25%
●
Total Blocking Time (TBT): 25%
●
First Contentful Paint (FCP): 15%
●
Speed Index (SI): 15%
●
Time to Interactive (TTI): 15%
●
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): 5%
Let’s check out the detailed description of
these metrics here.
- Largest
Contentful Paint
It measures the
point in the page load timeline when the page’s largest text block or image is
visible within the viewport. Lighthouse extracts LCP data from Chrome’s Tracing
Tool. The goal is to achieve LCP in less than 2.5 seconds.
LCP Time (in milliseconds) |
Color-Coding |
0 - 2,500 |
Green (Fast) |
2,501 - 4000 |
Orange (moderate) |
Over 4,000 |
Red (slow) |
The elements
included in LCP are text, images, videos, and background images.
- Total Blocking Time (TBT)
It represents the responsiveness to user input and measures the time between first contentful paint and time to interactive. TBT is the lab equivalent of First Input Delay (a field data used in the Chrome User Experience Report). The goal is to achieve a TBT score of lesser than 300 milliseconds.
TBT Time (in milliseconds) |
Color-Coding |
0 - 300 |
Green (Fast) |
301 - 600 |
Orange (moderate) |
Over 600 |
Red (slow) |
- First Contentful Paint (FCP)
It marks the time
at which the first text or image becomes visible on the website. The goal is to
achieve FCP in less than 2 seconds.
FCP Time (in seconds) |
Color-Coding |
FCP score (HTTP Archive Percentile) |
0 - 2 |
Green (Fast) |
75-100 |
2 - 4 |
Orange (moderate) |
50-74 |
Over 4 |
Red (slow) |
0-49 |
- Speed Index
This metric represents how much content is visible at the time of loading the website. The goal is to achieve SI in less than 4.3 seconds
SI Time (in seconds) |
Color-Coding |
FCP score (HTTP Archive Percentile) |
0 - 4.3 |
Green (Fast) |
75-100 |
4.4 - 5.8 |
Orange (moderate) |
50-74 |
Over 5.8 |
Red (slow) |
0-49 |
- Time to Interactive
It measures the
time from when the page starts loading to when its main resources have loaded
and are able to respond to the user’s input. The goal is to achieve TTI in less
than 3.8 seconds.
TTI Time (in seconds) |
Color-Coding |
0 - 3.8 |
Green (Fast) |
3.8 - 7.3 |
Orange (moderate) |
Over 7.3 |
Red (poor) |
- Cumulative Layout Shift
It represents the
user’s perception of a page’s visual stability and the goal is to achieve a CLS
score of less than 0.01.
CLS Score |
Color-Coding |
0 - 0.1 |
Green (Fast) |
0.1 - 0.25 |
Orange (needs improvement) |
Over 2.5 |
Red (poor) |
Do Lighthouse Scores Affect SEO?
No, Lighthouse Scores don’t affect your
website’s SEO. Although the tool
scores are a measure of a site’s usability, Google doesn’t use it for search
engine rankings. This is because the score in Lighthouse is based on Lab Data
and Google is more concerned with the performance of the site as experienced by
actual visitors.
According to Google’s John Mueller, a site with terrible scores can still rank if its content is relevant to a user’s query.
Conclusion
Google Lighthouse is the ultimate tool for measuring core web vitals; however, it doesn’t mean that the performance score affects your website’s SEO. Keep your content user-oriented and take your website to the top of the search engine’s ranking.
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