What log files analysis can teach us in an international SEO context - International Search Summit Barcelona 2025

Log files are a key technical SEO asset, especially when working on larger websites: they are the only reliable source of data to understand what robots are doing on a website. Proper log files analysis can help you optimise internal links and structural aspects of your website, while daily monitoring will help you detect issues and fix them before they hurt your SEO performance.
In a multilingual context, it can also bring additional insights to understand differences in treatment per country, for example. In this session, Julien reviews the best practices of log file analysis, what to look for and how to react, and will cover the specifics of multilingual websites.

Transcript

1. @diije #IntSS
2. @diije #IntSS SEO since 2011 Senior SEO Manager @ Turo LinkedIn / X (Twitter) Hello, I’m Julien
3. @diije #IntSS What is Turo? Turo is the world’s largest car sharing marketplace where you can book any car you want, wherever you want it, from a community of trusted hosts. @diije #IntSS
4. @diije #IntSS Log files 101 @diije #IntSS
5. @diije #IntSS 83.114.51.220 - - [11/Apr/2016:06:51:45 +0200] "GET /guide/creer-une-entreprise-de-transport-toutes-les-etapes/ HTTP/1.1" 200 32054 "https://www.google.fr/" "Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; CPU OS 9_3 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/600.1.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) GSA/13.1.72140 Mobile/13E237 Safari/600.1.4” What are log files?
6. @diije #IntSS 83.114.51.220 - - [11/Apr/2016:06:51:45 +0200] "GET /guide/creer-une-entreprise-de-transport-toutes-les-etapes/ HTTP/1.1" 200 32054 "https://www.google.fr/" "Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; CPU OS 9_3 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/600.1.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) GSA/13.1.72140 Mobile/13E237 Safari/600.1.4” IP Date Method URL What are log files? Response code Response size Referer User agent
7. @diije #IntSS Why are log files useful for SEO?
8. @diije #IntSS The only accurate way to know which URLs robots visit on your website.
9. @diije #IntSS Is it for me though?
10. @diije #IntSS Logs audit: consider it once a year or so Logs monitoring: useful for large websites Two main use cases
11. @diije #IntSS Waste: Do bots hit errors, unuseful pages? Frequency: Do bots visit the pages I want? Key learnings
12. @diije #IntSS Do I need a specific tool?
13. @diije #IntSS You can do without, but… About tools
14. @diije #IntSS What to check? @diije #IntSS
15. @diije #IntSS Is Google getting errors?
16. @diije #IntSS Persistent errors: there’s an issue to fix Temporary errors: watch the error rate Server errors
17. @diije #IntSS My advice Set alerts in case error rate increases Train your developers to check and fix issues Do not wait for GSC alert!
18. @diije #IntSS Compare: - # of URLs in crawl - # of URLs hit by Gbot - Active pages - Inventory / Database What does Google know?
19. @diije #IntSS Segmentation
20. @diije #IntSS Useful crawl? Step 1: panic
21. @diije #IntSS Useful crawl? Step 2: filter out unuseful crawl and relax
22. @diije #IntSS Is Google spending time on what matters?
23. @diije #IntSS International context @diije #IntSS
24. @diije #IntSS Which markets does Google priorize?
25. @diije #IntSS Does it compare to traffic?
26. @diije #IntSS There is a correlation between the volume of crawl on a page and the amount of traffic it’s getting.
27. @diije #IntSS Are trends similar? 15/09/2025 16/09/2025 17/09/2025 18/09/2025 19/09/2025 20/09/2025 21/09/2025 22/09/2025 23/09/2025 24/09/2025 25/09/2025 26/09/2025 27/09/2025 28/09/2025 29/09/2025 30/09/2025 01/10/2025 02/10/2025 03/10/2025 04/10/2025 05/10/2025 06/10/2025 07/10/2025 08/10/2025 09/10/2025 10/10/2025 11/10/2025 12/10/2025 13/10/2025 14/10/2025 15/10/2025 16/10/2025 17/10/2025 18/10/2025 19/10/2025 20/10/2025 21/10/2025 22/10/2025 23/10/2025 24/10/2025 25/10/2025 26/10/2025 27/10/2025 28/10/2025 29/10/2025 Country A bot hits visits 15/09/2025 16/09/2025 17/09/2025 18/09/2025 19/09/2025 20/09/2025 21/09/2025 22/09/2025 23/09/2025 24/09/2025 25/09/2025 26/09/2025 27/09/2025 28/09/2025 29/09/2025 30/09/2025 01/10/2025 02/10/2025 03/10/2025 04/10/2025 05/10/2025 06/10/2025 07/10/2025 08/10/2025 09/10/2025 10/10/2025 11/10/2025 12/10/2025 13/10/2025 14/10/2025 15/10/2025 16/10/2025 17/10/2025 18/10/2025 19/10/2025 20/10/2025 21/10/2025 22/10/2025 23/10/2025 24/10/2025 25/10/2025 26/10/2025 27/10/2025 28/10/2025 29/10/2025 Country B bot hits visits
28. @diije #IntSS Does it work? 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 15/09/2025 16/09/2025 17/09/2025 18/09/2025 19/09/2025 20/09/2025 21/09/2025 22/09/2025 23/09/2025 24/09/2025 25/09/2025 26/09/2025 27/09/2025 28/09/2025 29/09/2025 30/09/2025 01/10/2025 02/10/2025 03/10/2025 04/10/2025 05/10/2025 06/10/2025 07/10/2025 08/10/2025 09/10/2025 10/10/2025 11/10/2025 12/10/2025 13/10/2025 14/10/2025 15/10/2025 16/10/2025 17/10/2025 18/10/2025 19/10/2025 20/10/2025 21/10/2025 22/10/2025 23/10/2025 24/10/2025 25/10/2025 26/10/2025 27/10/2025 28/10/2025 29/10/2025 domestic non-domestic Release date
29. @diije #IntSS Googlebot’s behavior doesn’t change instantly!
30. @diije #IntSS Some other tricks @diije #IntSS
31. @diije #IntSS Last crawl date The 130 days rule Learn more @ alekseo
32. @diije #IntSS Are AI bots crawling me?
33. @diije #IntSS Where are users coming from?
34. @diije #IntSS What are they looking for?
35. @diije #IntSS Pieter Serraris Learn more Jérôme Salomon
36. @diije #IntSS What now?
37. @diije #IntSS We want Googlebot to Spend time on strategic pages Find all relevant pages Stop wasting time on garbage
38. @diije #IntSS It all comes down to internal links @diije #IntSS
39. @diije #IntSS https://speakerdeck.com/diije
40. Thank you @diije #IntSS Thank you! @diije #IntSS