Google Lighthouse 13 Launches With Insight-Based Audits via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google has released Lighthouse 13 with a broad audit consolidation that aligns Lighthouse reports with Chrome DevTools’ newer insight model.

The update is available now via npm and Chrome Canary. It will roll into PageSpeed Insights within about a week and is slated for Chrome’s stable channel with version 143.

Google says the update doesn’t change how Lighthouse calculates performance scores. This update targets non-scored audits only.

Lighthouse 13 Details

Audit Consolidation

Lighthouse 13 replaces many legacy audits with “insights” that mirror DevTools.

Notable examples include:

• CLS And Layout: layout-shifts becomes cls-culprits-insight for clearer identification of layout shift causes.
• Server And Network: document-latency-insight consolidates redirects, server response time, and text compression checks.
• Images: image-delivery-insight replaces modern formats, optimized images, responsive images, and efficient animated content audits.
• LCP: Two insights break down Largest Contentful Paint issues: lcp-discovery-insight and lcp-phases-insight. For interaction work, see interaction-to-next-paint-insight (INP).
• Third-Party: third-parties-insight replaces the older third-party summary to show external script impact.

Additional replacements address DOM size, duplicated JavaScript, font display, legacy JavaScript, HTTP/2 and modern HTTPS, network dependency trees, render-blocking, caching, and viewport configuration.

Audits Removed Without Replacements

Several audits were removed because they are outdated, inactionable, or low value in modern environments. Additionally, some audits were removed because they were costly to run.

Removed audits include:

• first-meaningful-paint
• font-size
• offscreen-images
• preload-fonts
• uses-rel-preload
• no-document-write
• uses-passive-event-listeners
• third-party-facades

Minor Differences From Earlier Previews

Google kept non-composited-animations and unsized-images as separate diagnostics to help locate issues that don’t directly cause CLS.

Google also removed font-size and preload-fonts even though those were not in the initial removal list.

Why This Matters

If you rely on Lighthouse for client reporting, you will see fewer line items and more consolidated insights that map to DevTools.

Your scores shouldn’t change just by upgrading, but any automation that keys off audit IDs will need to track the new insight identifiers.

For SEO context, the removal of the font-size audit reflects Google’s position that this is not a current SEO signal, even though legibility remains a UX consideration.

Looking Ahead

Expect Lighthouse and DevTools to stay aligned on the same insight model.

For reporting, consider mapping old audit IDs to the new insights now to avoid broken dashboards when PSI updates.

Featured Image: FotoField/Shutterstock

Google Launches New Small-Business Resource Hub via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google has launched a small-business resource hub, positioning it as a single starting point for setup, advertising, measurement, and support.

The page pulls together direct entry points for Business Profile, Merchant Center, Google Ads and YouTube Ads, plus a clear “get started” path into Google Analytics.

It also spotlights Workspace’s AI features and links beginner training and help resources in one place.

What’s In It?

The hub serves as a gateway to Google’s small-business tools.

You can claim a Business Profile, list products in Merchant Center, launch Google Ads or YouTube Ads, and activate Analytics.

The layout makes it easier to move a client from “claim your profile” to “list products” to “launch ads” without hopping sites.

Screenshot from: business.google.com/us/essentials/, September 2025.

How It Helps

For agencies and consultants, the practical use is straightforward: you can send new clients to a single URL for onboarding instead of assembling links across multiple Google properties.

It’s a navigational layer over tools you already use. What’s actually new is the packaging and emphasis.

Google has offered “Google for Small Business” destinations before, but this refresh lives on business.google.com, reflects today’s ads lineup, and puts AI-assisted workflows and starter website options in view.

That makes it more useful as a canonical link you can include in proposals, kickoff emails, and checklists.

Looking Ahead

The test for marketers is whether Google continues to keep this page fresh with the latest product updates, new partner offers, and up-to-date guides.

If it does, it can make onboarding smoother for small teams and give you more time to focus on strategy instead of worrying about URL management.

Featured Image: IB Photography/Shutterstock

Google Introduces Three-Tier Store Widget Program For Retailers via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google is expanding its store widget program into three eligibility-based tiers that you can embed on your site to display ratings, policies, and reviews, helping customers make informed decisions.

Google announces:

“When shoppers are online, knowing which store to buy from can be a tough decision. The new store widget powered by Google brings valuable information directly to a merchant’s website, which can turn shopper hesitation into sales. It addresses two fundamental challenges ecommerce retailers face: boosting visibility and establishing legitimacy.”

What’s New

Google now offers three versions of the widget, shown based on your current standing in Merchant Center: Top Quality store widget, Store rating widget, and a generic store widget for stores still building reputation.

This replaces the earlier single badge and expands access to more merchants.

Google’s announcement continues:

“It highlights your store’s quality to shoppers by providing visual indicators of excellence and quality. Besides your store rating on Google, the widget can also display other important details, like shipping and return policies, and customer reviews. The widget is displayed on your website and stays up to date with your current store quality ratings.

Google says sites using the widget saw up to 8% higher sales within 90 days compared to similar businesses without it.

Implementation

You add the widget by embedding Google’s snippet on any page template, similar to adding analytics or chat tools.

It’s responsive and updates automatically from your Merchant Center data, which means minimal maintenance after setup.

Check eligibility in Google Merchant Center, then place your badge wherever reassurance can influence conversion.

Context

Google first announced a store widget last year. Today’s update introduces the three-tier structure, which is why Google is framing it as a “new” development.

Why This Matters

Bringing trusted signals from Google onto your product and checkout pages can reduce hesitation and help close sales that would otherwise bounce.

You can surface store rating, shipping and returns, and recent reviews without manual updates, since the widget reflects your current store quality data from Google.

Featured Image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock

Google Search Console Adds Achievements Report To Track Milestones via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google adds an Achievements report in Search Console so you can track click-based milestones, see in-progress goals, and jump to Insights and tips.

• Achievements now live inside Search Console.
• Report is divided into In progress and Achieved sections.
• Goals are based on clicks from Google Search.

Google Modifies Search Results Parameter, Affecting SEO Tools via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google appears to have disabled or is testing the removal of the &num=100 URL parameter that shows 100 results per page.

Reports of the change began around September 10, and quickly spread through the SEO community as rank-tracking tools showed disruptions.

Google hasn’t yet issued a public statement.

What’s Happening

The &num=100 parameter has long been used to retrieve 100 results in one request.

Over the weekend, practitioners noticed that forcing 100 results often no longer works, and in earlier tests it worked only intermittently, which suggested a rollout or experiment.

@tehseoowner reported on X:

Google has seemingly removed the ability to do &num=100, can anyone confirm?

If you use the parameter, only 2 pages show. This “2 pages” filter has been tested for a year, but usually if you clicked to page 2 they have the rest the top 100. Now it shows nothing after page 2.

— SEOwner (@tehseowner) September 11, 2025

Keyword Insights wrote:

‼️ Google has killed the n=100 SERP parameter. Instead of 1 request for 100 SERP results, it now takes 10 requests (10x the cost). This impacts Keyword Insights’ rankings module. We’re reviewing options and will update the platform soon.

— Keyword Insights (@keywordinsights) September 14, 2025

Ripple Effects On Rank-Tracking Tools

Clark and others documented tools showing missing rankings or error states as the change landed.

Some platforms’ search engine results page (SERP) screenshots and daily sensors briefly stalled or displayed data gaps.

Multiple SEO professionals saw sharp declines in desktop impressions in Google Search Console starting September 10, with average position increasing accordingly.

Clark’s analysis connects the timing of those drops to the &num=100 change. He proposes that earlier desktop impression spikes were partly inflated by bots from SEO and AI analytics tools loading pages with 100 results, which would register many more impressions than a normal 10-result page.

This is a community theory at this stage, not a confirmed Google explanation.

Re-Examining “The Great Decoupling”

Over the past year, many teams reported rising impressions without matching clicks and associated that pattern with AI Overviews.

Clark argues the &num=100 change, and the resulting tool disruptions, offer an alternate explanation for at least part of that decoupling, especially on desktop where most rank tracking happens.

This remains an interpretation until Google comments or provides new reporting filters.

What People Are Saying

Clark wrote about the shift after observing significant drops in desktop impressions across multiple accounts starting on September 10.

He wrote:

“… I’m seeing a noticeable decline in desktop impressions, resulting in a sharp increase in average position.

“This is across many accounts that I have access to and seems to have started around September 10th when the change first begun.”

Keyword Insights said:

“Google has killed the n=100 SERP parameter. Instead of 1 request for 100 SERP results, it now takes 10 requests (10x the cost). This impacts Keyword Insights’ rankings module. We’re reviewing options and will update the platform soon.”

Ryan Jones suggests:

“All of the AI tools scraping Google are going to result in the shutdown of most SEO tools. People are scraping so much, so aggressively for AI that Google is fighting back, and breaking all the SEO rank checkers and SERP scrapers in the process.”

Considerations For SEO teams

Take a closer look at recent Search Console trends.

If you noticed a spike in desktop impressions in late 2024 or early 2025 without clicks, some of those impressions may have been driven by bots. Use the week-over-week changes since September 10 as a new baseline and note any substantial changes in your reporting.

Check with your rank-tracking provider. Some tools are still working with pagination or alternative methods, while others have had gaps and are now fixing them.

Looking Ahead

Google has been reached out to for comment, but hasn’t confirmed whether this is a temporary test or a permanent shift.

Tool vendors are already adapting, and the community is reevaluating how much of the ‘great decoupling’ story stemmed from methodology rather than user behavior.

We’ll update if Google provides any guidance or if reporting changes show up in Search Console.

Featured Image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock

Ahrefs Acquires Detailed.com & SEO Extension; Founder Joins Company via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Ahrefs has acquired Detailed.com and the Detailed SEO Extension, bringing a widely used on-page auditing tool and its audience under the Ahrefs umbrella.

As part of the deal, Detailed founder Glen Allsopp is joining Ahrefs full-time to work on marketing strategy, research, and product.

What’s Included

The acquisition covers the Detailed website and its browser extension, along with several smaller domains and extensions.

Launched in 2020, Detailed.com is known for long-form, data-driven SEO research and practitioner tips (including its analysis of how a small number of companies operate large networks of ranking sites). Over the past 12 months, Detailed.com recorded 970,000 unique visitors.

The Detailed SEO Extension reports over 450,000 weekly users on Chrome and approximately 7,000 on Firefox.

The extension speeds up page-level checks SEO professionals perform during audits and competitive reviews by surfacing title and meta tags, heading structure, robots directives, and schema markup in a single panel.

It also offers options for highlighting nofollow links, inspecting hreflang, viewing status codes, extracting People Also Ask results, switching the user agent to Googlebot, and jumping the current URL into popular research tools for deeper analysis.

What Changes For Extension Users

Allsopp told SEJ that the extension and all current functionality will remain free for all users.

If premium capabilities are ever added in the future, they would be additions rather than moving existing features behind a paywall. There are no current plans to introduce paid tiers.

On branding and distribution, the extension will keep the Detailed SEO Extension name. Detailed will operate as “Detailed, an Ahrefs brand.”

Users don’t need to take any action, and updates will continue as normal through existing Chrome and Firefox listings.

Statement From Glen Allsopp

Allsopp told Search Engine Journal:

“At a time when so much is happening in SEO and digital marketing as a whole, I want to be at the forefront of the work that helps companies reach more of their target audience. Ahrefs provides tools, data and insights I’ve used in my own business for years, so to be joining the team behind that is really exciting.”

Financial terms were not disclosed.

Looking Ahead

The move adds a high-usage browser utility and a research-driven content brand to Ahrefs’ portfolio.

If Ahrefs integrates or expands the extension’s capabilities over time, practitioners could see faster iteration on features that support day-to-day site audits, on-page reviews, and competitive analysis.

Featured Image: Screenshot from Detailed.com, September 2025. 

Google Drops Search Console Reporting For Six Structured Data Types via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google will stop reporting six deprecated structured data types in Search Console and remove them from the Rich Results Test and appearance filters.

• Search Console and Rich Results Test stop reporting on deprecated structured data types.
• Rankings are unaffected; you can keep the markup, it just won’t show rich results.
• API returns continue through December.

Ahrefs Launches Tracker Comparing ChatGPT & Google Referral Traffic via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Ahrefs released a public dashboard that tracks how much referral traffic websites receive from Google Search versus ChatGPT, with monthly updates.

The first dataset covers three complete months across 44,421 sites connected to Ahrefs’ free Web Analytics tool.

The Early Numbers

For July, the dashboard reports Google at 41.9% of total web traffic across the cohort and ChatGPT at 0.19%.

Month over month, Google grew 1.4% and ChatGPT grew 5.3%.

The prior month showed the reverse pattern: Google +6.8% and ChatGPT +1.6%. These swings show growth rates can vary by month even as Google’s share remains far larger. Ahrefs Traffic Analysis

The dashboard states:

“ChatGPT is growing 3.8x faster than Google.”

It adds:

“With 5.3% monthly growth vs Google’s 1.4% in the latest month, AI-powered search continues to evolve rapidly.”

And:

“ChatGPT now drives measurable referral traffic to websites, representing a new channel that didn’t exist 2 years ago.”

How The Data Is Collected

To keep the time series comparable, the tracker includes only sites that appear in all months. As the page explains:

“Our analysis tracks sites that appear in all months, ensuring statistically significant and reliable growth metrics.”

The page also lists the last update timestamp and confirms monthly updates.

Important Caveats

The dashboard measures referral traffic that arrives with a referrer.

Some AI systems and in-app browsers add noreferrer or otherwise strip referrers, which can undercount AI-originating visits.

Ahrefs has documented this analytics blind spot when measuring AI assistants and Google’s AI Mode. Keep that limitation in mind when comparing “AI search” activity to traditional search.

Scope matters too. The cohort is limited to sites using Ahrefs Web Analytics. Earlier Ahrefs research across different samples found AI referrals around 0.17% of the average site’s traffic, which is directionally consistent with the 0.19% shown here.

Looking Ahead

Google still sends the overwhelming share of visits in this dataset, and that reality should anchor your priorities. At the same time, ChatGPT’s July growth suggests an emerging, measurable channel you can evaluate with real data.

Use the tracker to watch how both lines move over time and adjust your testing accordingly.

Featured Image: JRdes/Shutterstock

Google: Why CrUX & Search Console Don’t Match On Core Web Vitals via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google’s Barry Pollard recently explained why website owners see different Core Web Vitals scores in Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) versus Google Search Console.

The short answer: both tools can be correct because they measure different things.

Pollard addressed the issue on Bluesky after questions about sites showing 90% “good” page loads in CrUX but only 50% “good” URLs in Search Console. His explanation can help you decide which metrics matter for your SEO work.

CrUX vs. Search Console

CrUX and Search Console measure performance differently.

CrUX counts page views and reflects how real Chrome users experience your site across visits. Every visit is a data point. If one person hits your homepage ten times, that’s ten experiences counted.

In Pollard’s words:

“Most CrUX data is measured by ‘page views’.”

He added:

“Users can visit a single page many times, or multiple pages once. 90% of your ‘page views’ may be the home page.”

Search Console works differently. It evaluates individual URLs and groups similar pages, giving you a template-level view of page health across the site. It’s a different lens on the same underlying field data sourced from CrUX.

Google’s documentation confirms: CrUX is the official Web Vitals field dataset, and the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console is derived from it and presented at the URL/group level.

Why Both Metrics Matter

Should you focus on page views or individual pages? That depends on your goals.

Pollard puts the choice on you:

“Should you care about ‘page views’ or ‘pages’? Well that’s up to you!”

High-traffic pages affect more people, so they often deserve first priority. They also tend to run faster because they get more attention and caching.

But don’t ignore slower pages. As Pollard suggested:

“Maybe they’d be visited more if not so slow?”

The best approach uses both views. Keep popular pages fast for current visitors, and improve slower sections to raise overall site quality and discoverability.

Action plan

When CrUX looks good but Search Console shows many problem URLs, it usually means your most-visited pages are fine while long-tail sections need work. That’s useful direction, not a conflict.

Start with the pages that drive the most sessions and revenue, then work through other templates so URL-level health catches up. As you assess changes, always check what each tool is counting and over which time window.

Looking ahead

Don’t panic when the numbers don’t align. They’re showing you different views of the same reality: user experiences (CrUX) and page health by URL/group (Search Console). Use both to guide your roadmap and reporting.

Google Trends API Alpha: Mueller Confirms Small Pilot Group via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google says the new Trends API is opening to a “quite small” set of testers at first, with access expanding over time. The company formally announced the alpha at Search Central Live APAC.

On Bluesky, Google Search Advocate John Mueller tried to set expectations for SEO professionals, writing:

“The initial pilot is going to be quite small, the goal is to expand it over time… I wouldn’t expect the alpha/beta to be a big SEO event :)”

Google’s own announcement also describes access as “very limited” during the early phase.

What Early Testers Get

The API’s main benefit is consistent scaling.

Unlike the Trends website, which rescales results between 0 and 100 for each query set, the API returns data that stays comparable across requests.

That means you can join series, extend time ranges without re-pulling history, and compare many terms in one workflow.

Data goes back 1,800 days (about five years) and updates through two days ago. You can query daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly intervals and break results down by region and sub-region.

At the launch session, Google showed example responses that included both a scaled interest value and a separate search_interest field, indicating a raw-value style metric alongside the scaled score. Google also said the alpha will not include the “Trending Now” feature.

Why There’s High Interest

If you rely on Trends for research, the consistent scaling solves a long-standing pain point with cross-term comparisons.

You can build repeatable analyses without the “re-scaled to 100” surprises that come from changing comparator sets.

For content planning, five years of history and geo breakdowns support more reliable seasonality checks and local targeting.

Looking Ahead

The small pilot suggests Google wants feedback from different types of users. Google is prioritizing applicants who have a concrete use case and can provide feedback.

In the meantime, you can continue to use the website version while preparing for API-based comparisons later.

Featured Image: PhotoGranary02/Shutterstock