Obsession with Lighthouse Scores and GEO
02 Nov 2025 » Opinion
In my post on Flicker, Personalization and Page Speed, I mentioned the obsession with the Google Lighthouse scores. The LinkedIn comments I received suggested that I was not alone in my views. I planned to write another post, deepening my point of view, but recent developments have significantly changed the landscape.
Summary of the Past
Before I explain what is changing, I will start with what I have seen in the last few years.
One of the approximately 200 ranking factors that Google uses in its ranking algorithm is page load time. Let me repeat that again: only one out of ~200 parameters that Google considers in its algorithm is the time the page takes to load.
This has led hordes of zealots to take full control of websites and demanded major changes to achieve some absurd number. These people would not try to find compromises. The consequences have been noticeable in digital marketing: the capability to personalize websites without flicker has diminished. I have been in my fair share of battles with them and I was never able to win. 😞
I never believed that such extortionate measures were positive. I agree that a website that takes 10+ seconds to load on a desktop connected to a fiber connection offers a very bad experience. However, those 10 seconds on a patchy 3G connection are to be expected. All my customers are well-known companies, who are usually searched for by name. In this case, the brand is so strong that a slightly slower website would not be noticeable in the search results. In other words, site speed, while necessary, is not a deal breaker.
The New Kid in Town
In the last few years, generative AI has taken the market by storm. So much so that one of the immediate consequences has been that organic search traffic to websites has dropped significantly. People are changing the way they search for information, especially the younger generations. Instead of using a few, carefully selected keywords in a search engine, you now describe your problem in detail and the generative AI platform replies with all the information you need.
The first consequence is that fewer prospects, although more qualified, will land on your websites. With search engines, we had to manually check multiple links until we found what we wanted. Now, the generative AI tool of choice will do that for us automatically by reviewing multiple pages. Only when the prospect is ready to take the next step, they will click on a reference to your website.
Another consequence is that this new technology will force a change in how digital marketing teams distribute their budgets. There is a new discipline that will soon become a significant part of those marketing efforts: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). Not only will you want your website to score high in search engines, but you will also need to be the reference used by Large Language Models (LLMs) when providing a response to a prompt relevant to your business. Adobe has just launched a product called LLM Optimizer precisely with this goal in mind. As a clarification, LLMs are the backbone of generative AI tools.
My Point of View
In my opinion, and given all that I am seeing and my experience, this is what I expect for the near future:
- Content will still be king. That was an expression used with SEO, but with GEO, it will even be more important. Quality content is what an LLM will use to select a website.
- While Gemini and other LLMs rely on Google data, and thus, page speed will still matter somewhat, not all successful engines will use Google’s index.
- LLMs have a different set of parameters to evaluate whether a website is relevant or not. I doubt page load time will be one.
- There will be a tension between SEO and SEM on the one side, and GEO on the other. I expect GEO to win.
- Page speed will always be important, within reasonable expectations. However, the pursuit of perfect Google Lighthouse scores will become irrelevant.
- The aggressive approach that many companies have taken to achieve these perfect scores will have to be backtracked to allow personalization and optimization tools to do their job.
In summary, being able to use all digital marketing tools at their full capacity to increase conversion will be more important than ever. Companies will have a smaller window of opportunity to convince a new visitor to stay and convert.
What is your point of view? Will we still have to battle with impossible page speed requirements or will we get back all the tools we need to convince prospects?