Log Analysis | Logflare

Description LogFlare

In recent years, log files (or log files) have gained popularity among SEOs, especially in technical SEO.  The fact is that one of the reliable methods to understand which URLs are crawled by search engines on your website is to check the log files.  They provide access to important information useful for diagnosing technical problems in SEO. LogFlare is a tool designed to help Cloudflare users store, inspect, and manage their log files. 

What is LogFlare? 

Logflare is a Cloudflare application that makes it easy to manage and store log files. By default, the tool stores logs only for 7 days. However, you have the option of exporting them to BigQuery for 30 days of storage. LogFlare also offers the ability to explore your log files on Google Data Studio for better data visualization.  Source: CloudFlare The main purpose of the tool is to really streamline the logging process for Cloudflare, Elixir, and Vercel users. But, it can also be configured to take into account other types of log files.  Logflare gives you reliable and fast logging without any usage limits with always-on servers so users don’t experience any downtime. 

LogFlare: How to use the tool to access your log files? 

Prerequisites 

LogFlare was created to provide users with a better logging experience.  But before taking full advantage of the tool, there are a few prerequisites that must be met: 

• The site must work with Cloudflare as the DNS management solution 
• Have a LogFlare account, regardless of the subscription plan chosen
• Have a Google Data account Free studio (Optional)
• Have a BigQuery account (Optional)

Once these conditions are met, you can take advantage of LogFlare’s features to manage your log files. And for that, here are the different steps to take into account: 

Step 1: Configure LogFlare

Our first step will be to configure LogFlare and this is very easy to do.  To get started, you need to create a LogFlare account. To do this: 

• Go to the LogFlare home page and click on “Sign Up” 

You will then be asked to continue with Google, Github, Slack or by e-mail. 

• Since almost everyone has a Gmail account, choose the “Continue with Google” option. 

Once your Google account is linked, the setup wizard will ask you to create a source. 

• To do this, you will just have to propose a name to your source in the field displayed on the page then click on the “Add Source” button. 

Note : To respect the naming convention, it is recommended to follow the format Yourapp.server-name. Example : Yourapp.cloudfare if your website uses Cloudfare Or Yourapp.vercel if you use Vercel.  You will then be redirected to this page:  If you have successfully completed this step, you have now configured LogFlare and can now receive your log files.  

Step 2 – Receive log files

The second step will be to receive the log files on your LogFlare interface. For this, the tool makes your job easier by making the Cloudfare service available to you. So you don’t have to worry about finding a service worker. 

• Access your Cloudfare account and then click on the “Applications” tab. 
• Then search for “LogFlare” in the search bar of the page and click on the first result of your search. 
• It should be the LogFlare logo. Click on it then follow the instructions to install the application. 

• Once the installation is complete, you should be able to access your account. 
• So go back to LogFlare.com and check your dashboard. Your log files should start to appear. 

• To get more details about your log files, you can click on the source.  
• You can also use the search bar located at the bottom of the page to access and query a particular log file. 

As can be seen, accessing and managing log files becomes simple with LogFlare.  In the free version of the tool, your log data is only kept for a short period of 7 days.  But if you want access to it at any time, the tool gives you the option to push your logs to BigQuery. You can follow this official documentation to set up the BigQuery connection.

LogFlare: Everything you can do with the tool 

To streamline the logging experience, LogFlare offers several features including: 

• Setting up a BigQuery backend 

• Combining LogFlare and Data Studio to create Google Data Studio dashboards and access insights data collected from your eventss
• Integrate LogFlare with Vercel to monitor your deployment on Vercel with structured logging
• Configure LogFlare Slack to receive LogFlare alerts in your Slack channels
• Integrate Logflare and your analytics pipeline to create dashboards and access insights collected from data from your 

LogFlare events: Pricing 

LogFlare is available for free, but the tool also offers pricing plans that start from $5 per month. 

LogFlare: Documentation and Support

LogFlare offers fairly extensive documentation to guide you through the installation process.  The tool also provides a series of video tutorials to accompany your first steps after registration.  You also have exceptional support to assist you in the event of a particular concern. 

Additional Resources 

What is a log file? 

A log file is a kind of archive maintained by a server that records all of its past activities, including details of HTTP requests made to the server, both by bots and by human users.  There are several types of log files, one of the most common being access log files.  In an access log file, you can access a lot of information gathered about each request sent to the server, including: 

• IP address 
• User Agents
• Full URL path
• Timestamp (request from both bot and user) 
• The type of the request (GET or POST)
• The HTTP status code

Why are log files important in SEO? 

A log file is useful in SEO because it helps analyze information about how your website is performing and how it interacts with other sites on the Internet.  Source: Screamingfrog  This type of analysis can provide a more complete understanding of the proper functioning of your website, here are some examples:  View the HTTP status code report: In addition to knowing that there are 404 error pages on your site , a log file also lets you know precisely how many times a 404 URL has been visited by users and bots. This is very useful for discovering indexing problems that must be resolved as a priority. Analyze trends: With log files, you can track crawling activity on a particular URL or section or across your entire website over time. This will identify the changes in your site and investigate the possible reasons for a better solution approach.  Identify pages : By comparing data from log files and data from your website, you can also identify your orphan pages. Monitor crawling of your website by search engine bots: You can identify all your pages that are crawled by bots. This is useful for detecting indexing errors and optimizing crawl budget your site’s  https://www.twaino.com/definition/b/budget-crawl/  As you can see, analyzing information from a log file can be helpful in making changes to your site that will help it rank higher in organic searches.

How to access your log files

Most of the time, without expertise in the field, many people turn to developers to help them access and analyze their log files.  Fortunately, there are software solutions that make log file access accessible to everyone without much difficulty.  LogFlare is CloudFlare which allows you in a few clicks to access your log files with the possibility of exporting to the BigQuery database.