An SEOs Guide To JSON Log Files

Introduction To JSON Log Files

There isn’t an official standard for JSON log files. However, here at Screaming Frog we’ve seen enough examples to able to work out what formats are commonly used and import them.

Example

The Log File Analyser supports logs file that contain one JSON blob per line, with single name/value pairs.

{"remote_ip": "66.249.66.1", "remote_log": "-", "user": "-", "timestamp": "2017-01-01T00:00:00+00:00", "request-line": "GET www.example.com/contact.html HTTP/1.1", "status": "200", "response-bytes": "4523", "time-taken": "824253", "referer": "-", "ua": "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)" }

The names of the fields are not important, the Log File Analyser looks at the values provided.

Mandatory values:

• Timestamp
• URL
• Response Code
• User Agent

The following are optional. If they are not present, defaults will be shown in the user interface. To get the most out of the Log File Analyser it’s best to have all these values as well.

• Referer
• Response Size
• Remote Host
• Time Taken (Microseconds)

Download a 1,000 line example here.

If you have anymore questions about log files or how to use the Screaming Frog Log File Analyser, then please do get in touch with our support team.