What a Lighthouse Report Can—and Cannot—Tell You

Use the report to find work, not collect a trophy.

Chrome's Lighthouse tool audits areas including performance, accessibility, SEO, and general best practices. A failing audit is a lead worth investigating—not automatic proof that the business is losing customers.

We look for findings that affect real people first: slow content, unstable layouts, unreadable controls, broken semantics, and technical barriers.

• Run the same page more than once
• Test important page types, not only the homepage
• Confirm the finding in the actual page before changing code
• Prioritize customer impact over chasing a round number

Lab data and real-user data answer different questions.

Lighthouse runs a controlled lab test. That makes it useful for repeatable debugging. Core Web Vitals field data describes what eligible real visitors experienced over time. A strong review uses both when both are available.