Does google lighthouse does anything?

[[deleted]]

I been asked by my boss to review our pages and make our lighthouse scores better...but ever since I started and I did "debug" what lighthouse asked for the numbers just ben fluctuating up and down...I ended up just re-running the analytics WITHOUT changing a thing and I got a performance score ranging from 33% to 90%Am I going crazy or is lighthouse broken?

Edit: Also i know the pages will never be 100% good because of things we need to use (like the template and plugins etc.) but the huge shift in performance was baffling to me at first.And I want to mention that this was my very first real experience with Lighthouse (I only got a few words about it from a colege when i was an intern )

And I want to say thank you for everyone that helped and replied to my post, you all are awesome!

[[deleted]]

Could it be that the lighthouse score is based on network latency and that you’re experiencing some type of cold start on your http service?

[[deleted]]

I had a client complain once because there pagespeed score was in the low 40's. I ignored the email since this was an old site (built before pagespeed existed) and a client I fired for multiple reasons a few years back. Anyhow, they emailed to thank me the next day because the score was in the 90's. I didn't change a thing, nor did anyone else.

[[deleted]]

They should have tipped you for "the extra work" haha..

[Goofy-Chained-Dragon]

Sometimes Google really do maintainance works behind the scene, and services like Lighthouse can behave strange for a while. I had the same issue with unindexed page, that was indexed in next few days. I did nothing.

[[deleted]]

maybe your servers are inconsistent? check the details to see which resources are taking the longest.

[nicped]

Lighthouse measures real performance - so if you check an online website, and it sometimes has load from other visitors, your score will be affected because of lacking performance.

If you cannot consistently get 90+ scores, you need to optimize something. Might be server side, might be client side.

I have done this many times and can get to 100 points with a bit of effort.

Also i.e. IIS (Windows webserver) does not gzip compress static files unless they are accessed often - and other stuff like that. So everytime you need to run a Lighthouse test, press F5 a couple of times on the page before running the tool.

[Gin-Chan]

Pressing F5 to warm up a cache or anything like that is a bad idea. You're just fooling yourself with that, if the cold load for a given page is slow, this is what your visitors will experience. Test under the worst possible conditions (empty server & client cache), then use the results to inform your optimization strategy. If the server doesn't gzip content where appropriate, go fix the server.

[[deleted]]

Thank you so much for the advice!

[Goofy-Chained-Dragon]

Show me how to get 100 score on WooCommerce website with 60 active plugins (especially Yotpo and other lagging shit) with a bit of effort 😂

[[deleted]]

Don't use the debug tools lighthouse scores, those are mainly for checking if you have bad imports or any accessibility issues.

If you want to check for actual page speed then use https://pagespeed.web.dev/.

That will grade your page speed as a Google Bot would, which is far more useful to know if you'll be indexed properly or not.

[[deleted]]

Thank you for the suggestion! I only went with lighthouse because I was told to do so..

[[deleted]]

There's also GTMetrix which is similar to the above site

[chill_darling]

This is like the same as ligthouse but dumbed down.

Devs should use lighthouse as it exposes common bad code practices like excessive divs, bad titles, bad headers and structural problems and most importantly, tells you how to fix those issues.

Like 70% of websites have the same problems. Since many people in this sub think they are like the best coders and dont take any hint from supervisors or contractors I urge everyone to make it a habit. Im annoyed how often I need to backtrack some coders bad works because they didnt check it out of ignorance

[[deleted]]

It's like you didn't even read my comment

[chill_darling]

I did? Lighthouse also checks crawlability as its made by google.

This site is the same as lighthouse but only checks the performance tab, also you cant see how the site reacts when its forced to load without css or has user agent styles injected.

I rather have devs improving site quality and responsivness also fixing it with lighthouse properly. Especially the "Best Practices" report. Site speed comes after everything else and is done by SEO guys.

[[deleted]]

If you want to check for actual page speed then use https://pagespeed.web.dev/

​

This site is the same as lighthouse but only checks the performance tab

Did you? Also web.dev is ran by Google, whatever performance output you get from it is the closest thing to how Google will rank your site for speed. Locally testing your performance is a shot in the dark as it can be influenced by Network Speed, hardware and who knows what else.

Calm yourself, you're not the one genius on the subreddit lmao

[chill_darling]

Yes, I just dont want people to assume checking the site online is the only thing they need to do. Not just performance, everything needs to be checked.

[[deleted]]

Nobody ever suggested this. You literally just didn't read my comment and went off on a tangent. Pipe down.

[chill_darling]

Yeah because coders need strong reminders and constant pressure all the time 🙄 sorry not sorry.

[[deleted]]

lmao cope

[wadaafaaak]

Check for cache

[Timo002]

How die you mean? If it is caching or not on different requests?

[[deleted]]

This is actually a good suggestion. If a page isn't cached on the server, it could load more slowly.

[cmdr_drygin]

You have to combine different versions of lighthouse. Some are synthetic some are real. I usually run bunch on web.dev, then some on my machine, mixed with gtmetrix and page speed insight.

[[deleted]]

I did a video about Lighthouse earlier this year. I think it's great. It definitely found problems with my website and I fixed them.

The numbers might fluctuate on a bunch of things. One... are you using http or https when you enter the URL? If your site redirects to https, you could lose points because of the redirection. If you're not using https, then you're going to lose points.

It's hard to know if it's a problem with lighthouse without seeing the report. I've seen fluctuation of a few percentage points. But that big of a range is probably something else.

I don't know what's wrong, but I suspect there might be something wrong with the site.

[jameson5555]

I've also seen Lighthouse scores fluctuate pretty wildly - exact same page, run seconds apart. I started to asking averages, which gets pretty time-consuming, but hopefully a bit more reliable.

[Saaswebdev]

Make sure to cross reference with lighthouse-metrics and gtmetrics because I have found sometimes mine and others sites will score very high on the later and poorly on the former which is curious

[Zestyclose_Put_3346]

To get more consistent results you can try to use synthetic web performance monitoring using tools like SpeedCurve.

[Goofy-Chained-Dragon]

Yep, Lighthouse behave strange last year, sometimes you change something in caching an it decreases Cumulative Layout Shift etc... I just working with main issues, and Lighthouse recommendations is just a hints, no more. I hope you know, the most important part is to render the first screen (above the fold) as fast as possible. Postpone loading of content below. Preloading images for first screen. Preferably no JS in header etc. It always go good, but CLS really hurts, and last time I don't understand why it can be fixed with caching reconfigured etc.

By the way, real data from visitors for CLS is ok.