I’m Corey, The Server Log Kid. Today’s question is what is the difference between access and error logs?
Transcript
So Corey, that is a brilliant question. What is the difference between access and error logs? Most of the questions we get in are actually to do with crawling and we’re more server log experts so I’m quite glad this question’s come in. Basically, the difference is in the names. Access logs is everything, so everyone, every time somebody or something has accessed the website. Error logs just record the same information but only for error pages.
Really when you do a server log analysis you should really be looking at the access logs because you do want to see 200 response codes. You do want to see the other things instead of just the errors, so definitely look in all them. But if you do care about just the errors, you might be a developer looking at what bugs you’ve got on the site, error logs will just give you that information and you can filter out all the 200 response codes etc. But that’s the big difference.
What you shouldn’t do, and this is very important, is combine them both together because you’ll think you’ve got double the amount of errors than you actually have. Just look in one or the other, don’t actually combine them because like I said, you’ll see double the amount of errors and think you’ve got twice as many issues as what you really have. So yeah, that’s the difference really; access logs is everything, error logs is purely what it says on the name on the tin, just the errors that occurred on your website.
I hope that answers today’s question for you. If you have any questions, please do send them in, we’re more than happy to answer them. I’m Andy, this is Corey, aka The Server Log Kid. Please do follow us on Twitter, I’m @onpagerocks, he is @serverlogkid. We’re on Facebook as Onpage Rocks and we do have a technical SEO group on Facebook called Onpage Rocks, so please do join, ask any questions on there and we’ll try and be helpful. Our YouTube is Onpage.Rocks, so please do follow and subscribe us on there for the latest videos to be published. We’re both on LinkedIn so please follow or connect with us and again thanks for following, and if you have any questions please ask them.