Chrome-Lighthouse user agent
Operated by Google
Chrome-Lighthouse is the user agent of Lighthouse audits, including Google PageSpeed Insights tests.
The Chrome-Lighthouse bot at a glance
- Chrome-Lighthouse is operated by Google and fetches pages to power a specific product feature.
- The robots.txt token for Chrome-Lighthouse is Chrome-Lighthouse.
- Blocking an SEO tool crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings.
- Chrome-Lighthouse robots.txt support: Not documented.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Allow.
What is Chrome-Lighthouse?
Chrome-Lighthouse appears when someone tests a page in PageSpeed Insights or runs a Lighthouse audit.
Blocking it breaks those performance and SEO reports for your pages.
Should you block Chrome-Lighthouse?
Allow Chrome-Lighthouse unless it causes a measurable load problem.
| Effect on search rankings | Blocking an SEO tool crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings. |
|---|---|
| Effect on AI visibility | No effect on AI answers. Blocking hides your pages and backlinks from that SEO tool, including from competitors who use it, and breaks your own audits in that tool. |
| Follows robots.txt | Not documented |
| Recommendation | Allow |
How to block or allow Chrome-Lighthouse
Put the robots.txt rule in the file at the root of every domain and subdomain, for example https://example.com/robots.txt. The token Chrome-Lighthouse is matched case-insensitively. robots.txt alone may not stop Chrome-Lighthouse, so add the Nginx, Apache or Cloudflare rule as well.
robots.txt: block
# Block Chrome-Lighthouse
User-agent: Chrome-Lighthouse
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow Chrome-Lighthouse
User-agent: Chrome-Lighthouse
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep Chrome-Lighthouse out of private areas only
User-agent: Chrome-Lighthouse
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to Chrome-Lighthouse
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(Chrome\-Lighthouse)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to Chrome-Lighthouse
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (Chrome\-Lighthouse) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "Chrome-Lighthouse")How to verify real Chrome-Lighthouse traffic
Google publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for Chrome-Lighthouse, so the user agent cannot be verified. Anyone can send the same string. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
How to find Chrome-Lighthouse in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts Chrome-Lighthouse requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "Chrome-Lighthouse" access.log | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20For a full report per AI bot, upload the log to the AI Log File Analyzer, a free tool by Justin Hà.
Chrome-Lighthouse user agent string
The full user agent Google publishes for Chrome-Lighthouse. Version numbers such as Chrome/W.X.Y.Z change over time, so match the token, not the whole string.
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0.1; Nexus 5 Build/MRA58N) AppleWebKit/537.36(KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/69.0.3464.0 Mobile Safari/537.36 Chrome-LighthouseChrome-Lighthouse FAQ
Chrome-Lighthouse identifies itself with the robots.txt token "Chrome-Lighthouse". A typical request header reads: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0.1; Nexus 5 Build/MRA58N) AppleWebKit/537.36(KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/69.0.3464.0 Mobile Safari/537.36 Chrome-Lighthouse
Google has not documented how Chrome-Lighthouse treats robots.txt. Add a robots.txt rule and back it with a server rule if the traffic matters to you.
Blocking an SEO tool crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings. No effect on AI answers. Blocking hides your pages and backlinks from that SEO tool, including from competitors who use it, and breaks your own audits in that tool.
Add two lines to the robots.txt file at the root of each domain and subdomain: "User-agent: Chrome-Lighthouse" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Not reliably. Google publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for Chrome-Lighthouse, so anyone can send the same user agent. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
Search your server access log for "Chrome-Lighthouse", for example with: grep -i "Chrome-Lighthouse" access.log. The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits per AI bot from an uploaded log file.
Sources: Public bot registry. Last reviewed by Justin Hà.
See which of these bots actually reach your website
The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits from GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and other AI crawlers in your server log, for free. The GEO Technical Package sets up robots.txt, llms.txt and crawler access for AI search.
