Log File Analysis
Analysis of server access logs to understand search bot behaviour.
Log file analysis is the process of examining server access logs recorded for every request to a website. Unlike Google Search Console’s sampled data, logs show **every** visit from search bots, providing a complete picture of crawling behaviour and helping optimise the crawl budget.
Why analyse logs
Log files contain every request to your server — from humans, bots, and APIs. For SEO, the most important are the records of search engine bots (Googlebot, Yandex Bot). Analysing them gives you unfiltered data, unlike the sampled reports from GSC or Yandex.Webmaster.
What logs reveal
- Which pages bots visit most often
- Which pages bots ignore (even if they are in the sitemap)
- HTTP response codes (200, 404, 500) per request
- Crawl frequency and last crawl timestamp
- Which bots hit your site (googlebot, yandex, bing, ahrefs, etc.)
Crawl budget and hidden pages
One crucial use case is detecting orphan pages. If a bot finds a page via a direct link from another site or an old sitemap, but there are no internal links to it, logs will show it. Such pages waste crawl budget without delivering value.
The only truth lies in server logs. GSC shows sampled data. Logs show every single bot hit.
Common questions
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