Google today said it is rolling out Lighthouse 3.0, an update to its tools that help developers optimize their websites and audit their performance.
The new update is centered around more precise and actionable metrics, such as page load time and the components of the site that might be slowing it down. Google has been working to ensure that websites are able to run quickly and smoothly through products like Google AMP. Getting all those websites running in an optimized fashion can increase engagement across the board, and the new version of lighthouse is designed to drill even further down to what’s happening. Google announced its launch today at Google I/O 2018.
All this is important for Google, too. If Google is going to be the service surfacing up all these websites, getting people in to the best experiences means users will end up expecting that kind of performance. They’ll then come back to Google to get all that information, even if it means going to Google to search for their favorite services that they access through a website.
But if developers are going to figure out where their websites are failing, they might need to test smaller components bit-by-bit to figure out what’s happening. Lighthouse gives developers a way to look for the failing indicators of a website and find out exactly what might be making the experience less than optimal. The more granular the tools, the more information they can use in order to figure out how to improve those websites.
