Lighthouse 13.5 Elevates AI Agent Resource Discovery
Lighthouse 13.5 adds an audit for Agentic Resource Discovery, called ARD. This change focuses on how AI agents locate your site tools and services. The audit compares a published catalog to the ARD schema, and it validates conformance. Lighthouse checks robots.txt Agentmap lines, link relations, and HTTP Link headers. If no pointer exists, Lighthouse requests the well known path for a catalog. Errors in schema or unloadable manifests trigger failure, otherwise the audit is Not Applicable.
The ARD spec evolved, renaming the manifest to ard.json while keeping older ai-catalog paths supported. Lighthouse currently checks only specific discovery locations, and it does not parse JSON LD or DNS records yet. This audit groups with llms.txt under Agent Discoverability, and it reports pass ratios not numeric scores. For site owners, publishing a conformant ARD manifest avoids Not Applicable labels, and it improves agent access. Expect the new audit in Chrome DevTools and PageSpeed Insights within weeks, and watch for schema alerts. The ARD proposal credits authors from Google, Microsoft, and Hugging Face, and standards remain in flux.
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Source: www.searchenginejournal.com
