Google releases Lighthouse version 3.0

Have you upgraded to Lighthouse 3.0 yet? If not, here is what is new and great in the new version of Google's tool for web developers.

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Google Lighthouse

Around Google I/O this year, Google released a new version of Lighthouse, a tool backed by Google to help developers make better web pages by providing a set of audits against a web URL. The tool will return tips and guidance on how to improve a specific web page for performance, accessibility, progressive web apps and more.

Version 3.0 is out and it brings faster audits, less variance, a new report user interface, new audits and much more.

Here is a look at the new user interface for the reports:

Lighthouse3

The new features in Lighthouse 3.0 include:

  • Faster audits and less variance.
  • The new user interface for reports, as shown above.
  • The Node version of Lighthouse now supports the same configuration options as the CLI version.
  • Scoring changes: The Performance score is a weighted average of the Performance audits. The weighting of the audits also changes in v3.
  • CSV outputs: Report results can now be output in CSV. Each row contains information and results for one audit.
  • JSON output changes.
  • New audits include First Contentful Paint, robots.txt is not valid. Use video formats for animated content and avoid multiple, costly round-trips to any origin.
  • Two audit changes including First Interactive to First CPU Idle and Perceptual Speed Index to Speed Index.

For more on these changes and how to upgrade, see this page.


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

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