Have your Lighthouse scores dropped? Did your green circles turn orange? Here are the three most likely reasons.

1. New rules from Google

In March 12, 2024 Google changed replaced First Input Delay with Interaction to Next Paint. This means that the Performance score is now based on different measurements and thus leads to different results.

2. Different code

If your website has A/B tests active, or changed the ads or scripts that are loaded (through a tag manager) you can expect a completely different score as you are testing different code.

3. Different environment (variables)

It matters if you test on a high-performance desktop or a low-performance laptop. You should also know that browser extensions that inject Javascript and add/modify network requests will influence your score. You can use a Privacy Window to prevent this. Finally, antivirus software can influence response times, which can negatively influence your score.

Did you find your reason?

I hope you found the reason your score dropped through the suggestions above… The next question is: Should you care about a non-perfect Lighthouse score?

()  Joost van der Schee