Website Health

Know what your website check is telling you.

This is a mobile lab check of the submitted page. It is not a Google Maps assessment, a ranking forecast, a complete accessibility audit or a penetration test. The Maps checker is a separate tool.

Two kinds of score

Google Lighthouse returns four category scores: Performance, SEO, Accessibility and Best Practices. The report shows those scores when the measurement includes them.

Ascent then reads the underlying checks into four separate sections: Performance, SEO basics, Mobile experience and Security basics. An Ascent section score is not one of the four Google scores renamed. Accessibility and Best Practices stay as Google’s categories. They are not turned into Ascent section scores.

A missing result is not a pass. A check without evidence is marked “Not assessed”. A section without enough measured weight says “Insufficient evidence” and does not receive a score.

Performance

Where the measurement includes them, the performance section can cover loading metrics, page weight, the number of requests, image delivery, caching, redirects, and unused, unminified or render-blocking files. Loading metrics include the main content paint, layout shift, blocking time, the first visible paint, Speed Index, and Interaction to Next Paint when that metric is present.

Lighthouse sometimes returns a newer finding for image delivery, cache lifetime or render-blocking files. When that newer finding has a pass or fail result, the report uses it instead of the older checks it replaces. If the newer finding has no score, it stays not assessed. An empty or missing result is not treated as a pass.

SEO basics

The supported checks look at the submitted page’s title, meta description, whether the page can be indexed, its HTTP status, canonical, robots.txt, link text, whether links can be crawled, and image descriptions. These are page signals. They do not forecast rankings, and they do not review the rest of the site.

Mobile experience

The mobile section looks for a viewport, readable text size, and tap-target size when those checks are present in the measurement. The current tap-target check is target-size. Viewport and text size are often absent from a current Lighthouse result. When they are absent, the report says they were not assessed. It does not fill the gap with a pass, and it does not treat an older tap-target result as the current check.

A thin mobile section is a gap in the evidence, not a statement that the page works well on a phone.

Security basics

The supported checks are limited: whether the page is on HTTPS, whether an HTTP visit is redirected to HTTPS, and whether a content security policy is present. A missing score is not a pass, and the absence of a policy is not reported as a vulnerability. This is not a security certification and not a penetration test.

Accessibility and Best Practices

These names belong to Google’s four category scores. When Lighthouse returns them, the report shows those category scores beside Performance and SEO. They are not a complete accessibility audit, and Best Practices is not a security review. The Ascent sections remain Performance, SEO basics, Mobile experience and Security basics.

What a score requires

Related checks share a group, so several checks about the same subject do not each cast a full vote. A section receives a number only when measured weight is at least half of that section and at least two groups have scores. Below that, the section says “Insufficient evidence”. Checks that were not returned stay “Not assessed” and are listed with the section so the gap is visible.

For the work beyond a single check, see website performance and website design.