Using Lighthouse to check SEO fundamentals
Lighthouse includes an SEO category that inspects a page for issues search engines care about. The resulting score and flagged problems give you a concrete starting point for improving how discoverable your content is. Poor crawlability or indexing can cut off a significant source of relevant traffic, so it is worth checking that search engines can actually parse your pages.
Running the SEO audit
To audit a page, open the URL you want search engines to see in Chrome and generate a report:
- Open DevTools with
Control+Shift+J(Windows/Linux) orCommand+Option+J(Mac). - Select the Lighthouse panel.
- Confirm the SEO checkbox is ticked in the Categories list.
- Click Generate report.
The report details which SEO checks passed and which failed, with guidance on how to resolve each detected problem. For a full breakdown of individual audits and remediation steps, see the SEO audits documentation.
Scope and limits of the audit
The Lighthouse SEO audit is not exhaustive. It measures a page against a baseline of technical best practices, but search engines each maintain their own ranking rules and requirements. For anything beyond the generic audit, consult the documentation for the specific search engine you are targeting:
Visibility in search results also depends on factors no audit can measure, such as whether the content resonates with your intended audience. Technical correctness matters, but it supports the core work of producing content that people actually want to find.
For deeper background, Google's I/O sessions cover building a search-friendly web presence and delivering JavaScript-heavy sites that search engines can still index:
