How accurate is Google Crawl Stats? Is it even worth looking at? To find out, I compared log file data to Crawl Stats across a few sites where I have access to both sets of data…
In this comparison, I found that Crawl Stats data from Google Search Console shows a moderate correlation with raw server log files. This is consistent with what I’ve seen on other sites across other time ranges.
However, correlating the data sets requires adjusting for a 1–2 day reporting delay. Across sites I’ve reviewed, including the examples below, GSC’s data reports typically ahead of the log file data. Though, for some sites this is 1-2 day adjustment backward. Check your data.
So what’s the takeaway?
While not identical, the alignment is close enough to use GSC as a directional indicator of crawl trends. If you don’t have access to log files, it will give you some idea of how Google crawls your website. You’ll see when crawl volume increases or decreases, and you can spot larger patterns.
If you want exact and accurate, real-time analysis, you have to access and use log files. Log files also show unsampled data, where GSC limits to only showing sampled details of what pages have been crawled.
A few notes:
- This looked at 25-29 dates, depending on what was available in GSC and logs
- Log file sources varied for each site (different environments, configurations, etc.)
- For two of the sites, Googlebot was verified but verification could not be confirmed for the other two
- This looked only at Googlebot Smartphone bot hits to simplify and clarify the comparison