Let's talk about something that frustrates us to no end.
There are companies out there charging $5,000, $10,000, sometimes $20,000+ for websites that look like they were built during a lunch break. We're talking cookie cutter templates, stock photos slapped everywhere, slow load times, and zero thought put into whether Google can actually find the thing. The client has no idea because the site "looks fine" to them. But under the hood? It's a mess.
The worst part is most people don't know how to check. They trust that the person they paid did a good job, and they move on. Then six months later they're wondering why nobody can find their business on Google.
Here's the good news: you don't need to be a developer, and you don't need to pay anyone to get a basic idea of whether your website is performing well. Google literally gives you a free tool to check. It's called Lighthouse, and it's already built into the Chrome browser you probably use every day.
Now, a quick disclaimer. Lighthouse is not a replacement for a full SEO audit or a professional review of your site. Think of it more like a check engine light on your car. It won't tell you exactly what's wrong with the transmission, but it will absolutely tell you something needs attention. And just like ignoring that light, ignoring these scores can cost you down the road.
What Lighthouse will show you is how your site performs in the areas that Google actually cares about when deciding where to rank you. And that matters because of something called indexing.
What Is Indexing and Why Should You Care?
Imagine you just wrote a book. A really good one. You printed thousands of copies. But here's the problem: nobody put it in any library and it's not listed in any catalog. People can't find it unless they already know it exists and exactly where to look.
That's what it's like when your website isn't indexed by Google.
Google works a lot like a librarian. It sends out little programs (called crawlers or bots) that go around the internet reading websites. When they find a page, they add it to Google's giant catalog. That catalog is the index. When someone searches for something on Google, it doesn't search the entire internet in real time. It searches its index. Think of it like the index in the back of a textbook. You know how you flip to the back, look up "photosynthesis," and it tells you "page 47, page 112, page 203"? Google's index works the same way. When someone searches "plumber near me" or "best coffee shop in Austin," Google looks through its index to find the most relevant pages.
If your website isn't in that index, or if Google had trouble reading it (because it was slow, broken, or poorly structured), you're basically invisible. It doesn't matter how pretty your website looks. If Google can't read it, Google can't recommend it.
This is why running a Lighthouse report matters. It checks many of the same things Google's crawlers look at when deciding how to index and rank your site.
How to Run a Lighthouse Report (Step by Step)
You don't need to install anything. If you have Google Chrome on your computer, you already have Lighthouse. Here's how to use it:
Step 1: Open Your Website in Chrome
Open Google Chrome and go to the website you want to test. This can be your own site or anyone else's. If you're shopping for a web developer, try running it on their own website first. If their site scores poorly, that tells you a lot about what yours would look like.
Step 2: Open Developer Tools
Right click anywhere on the page and select Inspect. A panel will open on the side or bottom of your screen. Don't worry about all the code you see. You don't need to touch any of it.
You can also open this with a keyboard shortcut:
- Windows/Linux: Press Ctrl + Shift + I
- Mac: Press Cmd + Option + I
Step 3: Find the Lighthouse Tab
At the top of the developer tools panel, you'll see a row of tabs like Elements, Console, Sources, and more. Look for one that says Lighthouse. If you don't see it right away, click the >> arrow at the end of the tab bar. It's probably hiding there.
Step 4: Choose What to Test
Once you're on the Lighthouse tab, you'll see some options. You can choose which categories to test:
- Performance — How fast your site loads
- Accessibility — How usable it is for people with disabilities
- Best Practices — Whether it follows modern web standards
- SEO — How well Google can read and understand your site
Leave them all checked. You want the full picture.
You'll also see a choice between Mobile and Desktop. Run it on Mobile first. Google uses the mobile version of your site for indexing, so that's the one that matters most.
Step 5: Click "Analyze page load"
Hit the button and wait. Lighthouse will reload your page and run a series of tests. This usually takes anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds depending on the site. When it's done, you'll see a report with scores from 0 to 100 in each category.
What Do the Scores Mean?
Lighthouse gives you a color coded score for each category:
- Green (90 to 100) — Great. Your site is doing well in this area.
- Orange (50 to 89) — Needs work. There are things dragging you down.
- Red (0 to 49) — Serious problems. If you paid someone for this, you should be asking questions.
A well built website should be scoring green or high orange across the board. If your site is sitting in the red on Performance or SEO, that's not just a cosmetic problem. It means Google is having a hard time working with your site, which means fewer people are finding you.
What to Look at First
You don't need to understand every single line of the report. Here are the big ones to pay attention to:
Performance
This tells you how fast your site loads. If it takes more than a few seconds, people leave. Google knows this and penalizes slow sites. The report will break this down further with metrics like:
- First Contentful Paint (FCP) — How long before something shows up on screen
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) — How long before the main content is visible
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) — Whether stuff jumps around while the page is loading
You know when you go to a website and you try to click a button but then the whole page shifts and you accidentally click an ad instead? That's a layout shift, and Google hates it as much as you do.
SEO
This section checks the basics that Google needs to properly read your site. Things like:
- Does every page have a title tag?
- Does every page have a meta description?
- Are images missing alt text (descriptions that tell Google what the image is)?
- Is the text big enough to read on a phone?
- Are the links crawlable (can Google's bot follow them)?
If these basics are failing, it means Google's bots are having trouble making sense of your site. Going back to the book analogy: it's like publishing a book where the table of contents is wrong, the page numbers are missing, and half the chapters don't have titles. The librarian is going to have a real hard time cataloging that.
Accessibility
This one is about whether people with disabilities can use your site. Can someone using a screen reader navigate it? Is there enough contrast between the text and the background? Are buttons labeled properly? Beyond being the right thing to do, accessibility also affects SEO. Google rewards sites that are usable by everyone.
Pro Tip: Test the People You're Thinking of Hiring
This is something most people never think to do. Before you hire a web developer or agency, run a Lighthouse report on their website. If the company building websites can't be bothered to make their own site fast and well structured, what do you think yours is going to look like?
You wouldn't hire a mechanic whose own car is breaking down in the parking lot. Same idea.
What Lighthouse Won't Tell You
Lighthouse is a great starting point, but it has limits. It only tests one page at a time, and it only checks technical factors. It won't tell you:
- Whether your content is actually good or relevant to what people are searching for
- How your site stacks up against your competitors in search results
- Whether your backlink profile is healthy
- If your site has duplicate content issues across multiple pages
- Whether your site's overall structure makes sense for search engines
For that kind of deep analysis, you need a proper SEO audit. But Lighthouse gives you enough to know whether you're starting on solid ground or sinking sand.
The Bottom Line
You don't need a computer science degree to figure out if a website was built well. Lighthouse gives you a clear, honest snapshot of how a site is performing in the areas that actually matter. It takes less than a minute to run, it's completely free, and it puts real data in your hands instead of relying on someone else's word.
Whether you're checking your own site, evaluating a developer you're thinking of hiring, or just curious about how a competitor's site holds up, go run a Lighthouse report. The numbers don't lie.