What is Server Log Analysis?
Server log analysis is the process of reviewing and interpreting server log files to gain insights into how search engine bots and users interact with a website. A server log is a plain text file automatically generated by your web server that records all requests made to the site, including date, time, IP address, user agent, requested URL, and status codes.
This analysis is a critical part of technical SEO and is used to uncover crawl patterns, errors, and opportunities for optimisation.
Why Server Log Analysis Matters
Server log analysis provides raw, reliable data on how search engines like Googlebot access your site. Unlike analytics tools that rely on JavaScript, server logs capture every request, including from bots that may not execute scripts.
Benefits of server log analysis include:
- Understanding crawl frequency and depth
- Identifying pages that are crawled too often or not at all
- Detecting crawl errors and 404s
- Monitoring bot behaviour and bandwidth usage
- Validating the impact of technical SEO changes
By studying server logs, SEOs can ensure that crawl budget is used efficiently and that important pages are accessible and indexed properly.
Example in Use
An SEO specialist might analyse server logs to check whether Googlebot is crawling newly added pages or wasting resources on outdated URLs. If the logs show frequent crawling of irrelevant pages, the site structure or robots.txt may need adjustment to guide bots more effectively.
Related Terms
- Crawl Budget
- Googlebot
- Robots.txt
- Indexing
- Technical SEO