Best Practices Score
How SitePulse measures technical best practices using Lighthouse.
The Best Practices score is a direct pass-through of the Lighthouse Best Practices score (0–100), captured via the Google PageSpeed Insights API.
What it measures
Lighthouse Best Practices checks a set of technical hygiene items covering security, reliability, and modern web standards:
| Check | What it looks for |
|---|---|
| HTTPS | Page served over HTTPS; no mixed content |
| HTTP/2 | Uses HTTP/2 or HTTP/3 for resources |
| Console errors | No errors logged to the browser console |
| Deprecated APIs | No use of APIs removed from modern browsers |
| Browser error logging | Unhandled promise rejections, console.error calls |
| CSP | Content Security Policy headers present |
| Geolocation on load | Does not request geolocation permission on page load |
| Notification on load | Does not request notification permission on page load |
| doctype | HTML document has a valid doctype |
| Charset | Page specifies character encoding |
| Detected JavaScript libraries | Lists third-party libraries (informational) |
Why it matters
Best Practices issues are often silent — they don't immediately break the page for most users but represent technical debt that affects security, reliability, and long-term maintainability. Console errors, for example, indicate JavaScript failures that may prevent features from working correctly for some visitors.
How to interpret your score
A score of 90+ means your page passes the majority of Lighthouse's best-practice audits. Scores below 70 indicate concrete issues that should be fixed.
Unlike Performance or SEO, Best Practices issues are almost always developer tasks — they require code changes or server configuration, not content edits.
Security headers
The Best Practices tab includes a Security Headers table showing exactly which response headers your page sent (Content-Security-Policy, Strict-Transport-Security, X-Frame-Options, and others) and which are missing — the same underlying checks that feed the CSP item above, laid out so you can see the full picture and hand it directly to whoever manages your server config.
How to improve
Check the Recommendations tab of your audit for the specific failing audits. Each recommendation links to the relevant Lighthouse documentation explaining the fix.
Tip
A failing CSP audit is common on sites that have not configured Content Security Policy headers. While not always critical, adding a CSP is a meaningful security improvement, especially for sites handling user data.
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