What Is Lighthouse?
Google's automated tool that audits a page for speed, accessibility, and SEO issues.
What it means
Lighthouse is the automated auditing engine behind PageSpeed Insights — it loads a page in a controlled environment, scores it across performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO, and lists specific issues it found along the way.
Why it matters
Because Lighthouse runs the page itself rather than sampling real visitor devices, it gives a consistent, repeatable score you can check before and after a change — useful for catching a regression right after you edit a page, before it shows up in real-world data.
ask datanephew
Does datanephew run Lighthouse audits directly?
Yes — when you ask for a page speed check, it runs a Lighthouse-based audit and reports the results, including specific issues found on the page.
Is a Lighthouse score the same as what real visitors experience?
Not exactly — Lighthouse is a controlled lab test, so it's consistent but can differ from real-world conditions. Ask datanephew about the difference if a Lighthouse score doesn't match what your traffic data seems to show.