Technical SEO News & Updates for May 2025

Google Lighthouse Audits Transition to Performance Insight Audits with Major Changes

26 days ago

Lighthouse is moving to performance insight audits, consolidating various performance tools. Several audits will be renamed or merged, while outdated ones will be removed. Breaking changes will affect API users, with the next major release, Lighthouse 13, planned for October 2025. Users can start migrating to the new insights now, with a toggle feature in Lighthouse 12.6. Documentation for the new audits will be available before the transition.

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Chrome DevTools Introduces CPU Throttling Calibration for Real-World Performance Testing

1 months ago

Technical SEO

Chrome DevTools introduces CPU throttling calibration to improve performance debugging using real-world data. This feature allows developers to create low-tier and mid-tier CPU throttling presets specific to their machines, addressing performance discrepancies between desktop and mobile devices. While CPU throttling effectively simulates mobile performance, it cannot replicate all hardware aspects, particularly GPU tasks.

Google Search Enhances Speed with Speculation Rules API for Faster Navigation

3 months ago

SEO Technical SEO

Google announced improvements to search speed via the Speculation Rules API, enhancing user experience by prefetching and prerendering results. It now prefetches the first two search results while ensuring privacy with features like anonymous IP usage. Tests showed significant loading time reductions. Prefetching extends to more results when users hover over links. Currently available on Chrome and Edge, Google aims for broader adoption and future enhancements.

Google Sunsets Web Vitals Extension as DevTools Integration Completes

4 months ago

SEO Technical SEO

Google has ended the Web Vitals Chrome extension with Chrome 132, finalizing the integration of Core Web Vitals into the DevTools Performance panel. Users will get end-of-support warnings, and the CrUX API key will be revoked. A migration guide is available for transitioning to DevTools, and instructions for keeping a local copy of the extension are provided for those who cannot migrate. Google will continue to improve the Performance panel's features.

Google Updates PageSpeed Insights with Enhanced CrUX Data Transparency

4 months ago

SEO Technical SEO

Google has updated PageSpeed Insights (PSI) to enhance visibility into the data collection period for Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) metrics. PSI now shows CrUX data for the 75th percentile of real user visits over a 28-day period with a two-day delay. This update helps developers monitor site optimization impacts and affects Google search rankings. The implementation of CrUX data varies across Google's tools, improving accessibility for developers.

Google releases guidance on faceted navigation and its impact on crawling efficiency

5 months ago

SEO Technical SEO

Google released a document on best practices for faceted navigation, addressing SEO challenges. While it enhances user experience, it generates numerous URLs, leading to overcrawling and delayed content discovery. Each filter combination creates distinct URLs, complicating SEO. Google suggests two strategies: blocking non-essential URLs with robots.txt and optimizing URLs with standard separators and consistent filter order.

Google Emphasizes HTTP Caching Importance for Efficient Web Crawling

5 months ago

SEO Technical SEO

Google's crawling infrastructure has seen a decrease in cacheable requests, dropping from 0.026% to 0.017% over the past decade. Caching is essential for fast page loads, resource savings, and bandwidth efficiency. Google supports heuristic HTTP caching through ETag and Last-Modified headers, with ETag being the recommended option for reliability. Implementing caching can save server resources and improve user experience, especially for sites with static content.

Google Clarifies How Robots.txt Works for Managing Website Crawling

5 months ago

SEO Technical SEO

A robots.txt file allows website owners to control how their site appears in Google Search by managing page indexing. It should be in the root directory and contains rules for bots. Robots meta tags provide another method to control indexing and bot behavior. Common mistakes include blocking pages in robots.txt while using meta tags. Best practices involve using meta tags for indexing control and testing configurations with Google tools.

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Google Chrome Site Engagement Metrics Framework Assesses User Interaction and Browsing

5 months ago

Technical SEO

Google Site Engagement Metrics Framework assesses and analyzes user engagement with websites using metrics like user interactions and engagement scores. Chromium tracks engagement through key metrics: Total Origins Engaged, Mean and Median Engagement, Engagement Score, and Engagement Type. Data is recorded using UMA histograms. Functions like RecordTotalOriginsEngaged and RecordMeanEngagement log unique origins and average scores.

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