Auditing Web Application Using Google Lighthouse

08 June 2021

What is Google Lighthouse?

Google Lighthouse is an automated open source tool used to check the quality, performance and correctness of progressive web applications. It helps the developer to know every possible way to improve a website’s function, performance, loading, SEO, accessibility. It is both available as a Chrome extension and on the Chrome Developer tools. The user can also run the Lighthouse through the Command line.

Google Lighthouse helps to improve the performance of the application and runs several tests to establish how a web application can crawl to the top search results. The SEO test result describes that anyone who develops the web application should make the required changes suggested by the Lighthouse test report.

How to add Lighthouse as a Chrome extension?

• Go to Chrome browser
• Go to More Tools
• Click on the Hamburger menu
• Click on Open Chrome Web Store
• Search for Lighthouse extension
  
• Click on Add to Chrome
  After installing the extension, the Lighthouse icon will appear on the upper right corner.
  

How to run Lighthouse to audit your website?

• Go to any website like lifecharger.org
• Click on Lighthouse icon
• Click on Settings icon
  
• Check the checkbox to select audit categories.
• Click on Generate report

The Report generated can be saved and the user can refer whenever needed.

How to read a Lighthouse report?

The Lighthouse report contains the performance of the Web Application against the four audit categories. The report depicts the standards not met by the application. It contains metrics against each attribute. The user can go to the individual category and see the in depth analysis of the application. The audits are displayed in two categories: Passed audits and Failed audits.

Passed audits:

Failed audits: