SitePulse

Web Performance Risk Monitor for Lighthouse on Apify.

SitePulse audits one or more URLs with Lighthouse and turns the results into structured health intelligence for operators, agencies, and product teams. Each audited page gets a health score, risk assessment, critical issues, performance insights, and optional regression deltas against a previous Apify run.

What This Actor Does

• Runs Lighthouse against public or authenticated pages.
• Supports mobile and desktop emulation.
• Scores Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, and SEO.
• Converts raw metrics into:
  • overall health score
  • performance severity
  • performance, conversion, technical debt, and SEO risk levels
  • critical issues and performance insights
• Optionally stores the full Lighthouse JSON report in the default key-value store.
• Optionally compares the current URL against a previous run with compareWithRunId.

Input

The actor expects a JSON object with these fields:

• startUrls: array of absolute http or https URLs to audit
• categories: optional subset of performance, accessibility, best-practices, seo
• formFactor: mobile or desktop
• saveFullReport: whether to store raw Lighthouse JSON
• compareWithRunId: optional Apify run ID for regression comparison
• cookies: optional cookies for authenticated pages

Example input:

{
  "startUrls": [
    { "url": "https://example.com" }
  ],
  "categories": [
    "performance",
    "accessibility",
    "best-practices",
    "seo"
  ],
  "formFactor": "mobile",
  "saveFullReport": true,
  "compareWithRunId": "optional-run-id",
  "cookies": [
    {
      "name": "session_id",
      "value": "abc123",
      "domain": ".example.com",
      "path": "/"
    }
  ]
}

Notes:

• startUrls is required.
• If categories is omitted, SitePulse runs all default Lighthouse categories.
• If a cookie omits domain, the actor applies it as a host-only cookie for the audited origin.

Output

SitePulse writes one dataset item per successful audited URL to the default dataset.

Dataset items include:

• auditStatus
• url
• fetchTime
• categories
• coreWebVitals
• overallHealthScore
• performanceSeverity
• riskAssessment
• criticalIssues
• performanceInsights
• scoreSummary
• regressionDelta when comparison is enabled
• fullReportKey when full report storage is enabled

Failed audits are summarized in the default key-value store instead of being written as dataset items.

The default key-value store contains:

• OUTPUT: run summary with requested, succeeded, failed, and skipped totals
• failedAudits: part of OUTPUT, with URL and error message for each failed audit
• report-<host>_<path>: raw Lighthouse JSON reports when saveFullReport is enabled

When the Actor runs with pay-per-event pricing and a per-run charge cap, SitePulse stops before auditing another URL once the remaining budget would no longer cover another default dataset item.

Scoring Model

SitePulse combines Lighthouse category scores with deterministic risk rules:

• weighted health score:
  • Performance: 35%
  • SEO: 25%
  • Accessibility: 20%
  • Best Practices: 20%
• severity overrides for catastrophic LCP or TBT
• risk classification for:
  • performance risk
  • conversion risk
  • technical debt risk
  • SEO risk

Very high Total Blocking Time and very poor Largest Contentful Paint now apply stronger score caps so severe pages cannot appear artificially healthy.

Authenticated Pages

To audit a page behind login or access controls, provide cookies in the input.

Recommendations:

• Use the minimum cookies needed for access.
• Do not paste tokens or credentials into logs or source files.
• Avoid committing real session values.