Glossary
Log file analysis examines a server's own request records to see exactly what crawlers fetched, when, and what response they received: evidence of crawler behaviour rather than an inference from a third-party tool.
Search console reports are sampled and delayed; a crawl tool simulates a crawler rather than observing one. The server log shows every request, including from crawlers that no dashboard reports on.
Which pages are crawled often and which are never fetched. How much crawl effort is spent on parameter URLs rather than content. Whether a crawler is receiving errors or redirects that the browser experience conceals. And, increasingly usefully, which AI crawlers are visiting and what they are taking.
For a small site it is usually unnecessary: the same problems are visible more cheaply in index coverage reporting.
Mainly if the site is large, has migrated recently, or shows indexing problems that coverage reports cannot explain. On a small healthy site the same issues surface more cheaply elsewhere.
Yes, and it is one of the few direct ways to see it. Logs record the user agent of every request, so you can see which AI crawlers visit, how often, and what they receive.
Log file analysis examines a server's own request records to see exactly what crawlers fetched, when, and what response they received: evidence of crawler behaviour rather than an inference from a third-party tool.
