SearchSeal vs DIY log analysis
Your access logs already record every AI crawler request. With grep, GoAccess or a log pipeline, you can analyze them yourself.
How SearchSeal and DIY log analysis differ
Honest answer: SearchSeal’s crawler evidence is derived from ordinary access logs. You could build that module yourself. Browser analytics is collected separately.
DIY log analysis measures
- Every request to your site, including every AI crawler, in raw form
- Whatever you build on top: scripts, dashboards, alerts
- Full control, no third party involved
SearchSeal measures
- Pageviews, privacy-safe daily visitors and sessions, and acquisition sources
- Human referrals from AI products, goals, conversion rates and same-day attributed revenue
- Real requests from AI crawlers, including requested paths and HTTP outcomes
- Observed evidence with explicit limits: crawler unknown is never rendered as zero
Side by side
| Decision factor | DIY log analysis | SearchSeal |
|---|---|---|
| Bot identification | You maintain the user agent list as new crawlers appear | Maintained crawler list, updated for you |
| Robots.txt verdicts | You cross-reference robots.txt by hand | Allow, partial or block verdicts per crawler |
| History | As long as you keep and rotate your logs | Kept for you, re-checkable |
| Programmatic access | grep, awk, or whatever you build | REST API and MCP server |
| Cost of your time | Engineering time to build and maintain | About 3 minutes to connect |
When DIY log analysis fits
You enjoy this kind of work, you already run a log pipeline, or your compliance rules keep logs in-house. Genuinely fine choices.
When SearchSeal fits
You want website analytics plus the same crawler evidence without building or maintaining a log pipeline, with crawler data over MCP.
Your logs already hold the data. SearchSeal just makes it usable.
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SearchSeal is in private beta. Public plans and pricing will follow.