Log File Analysis: See What Googlebot Is Really Doing

Server log files might just be the most underrated tool in your SEO toolbox.

Google Analytics shows you what users do on your site, but log files? Log files show you what bots are up to on the back-end - including Googlebot. You get a direct behind-the-scenes look at what Google’s actually crawling, how often, and whether it’s hitting errors or roadblocks along the way.

If you run a big site, this stuff is serious. It can show you exactly where Google’s wasting its time - and how to fix it. 

What Log Files Reveal

You can learn a few things from log files. First up, there’s crawl frequency. Are your key pages getting visited regularly? Or is Google spending all its time on tag pages, old content, or filters that don’t matter?

Then there’s status codes. These show if bots are hitting broken links (404s), getting stuck in redirect loops, or being served error pages. All of which hurt your crawl efficiency and prevent indexing.

You’ll also see which bots are visiting, how often, and from where. That means you can spot legit search engine crawlers... and the harmful ones that are just eating up server resources.

And finally you have user agent analysis. This basically tells you which bots are crawling your site - Google, Bing, or others - and how they’re behaving. That way, you can focus your efforts on the ones that actually matter for your rankings.

Identifying Crawl Problems

If you see loads of crawling on pages that offer zero SEO value, like filters, paginated or archived pages, then that’s your crawl budget going to waste.

And vice versa - if important new content isn’t being crawled at all, then that also rings alarm bells. It could be missing internal links, a robots.txt block, or maybe it’s just poorly structured and hard for Google to find.