How To Track and Log Google Crawler Requests with Laravel

Logging Google crawler requests is vital for SEO. It helps identify crawl errors, indexation issues, optimization opportunities, and malicious activity. This article explains why logging is essential and how to begin.

How to log Googlebot requests with Laravel

Logging each request made by Google crawlers is crucial for any website that wants to optimize its SEO performance. By keeping track of these requests, webmasters can gain valuable insights into how their site is being crawled and indexed by Google. This information can help identify potential crawl errors, indexation issues, and opportunities for optimization. Additionally, logging can help website owners identify any malicious bots or hackers attempting to access their site.

There are several Laravel packages available that can help with logging Google crawler requests. One popular package is "itsjjfurki/google-crawl-detector", which allows you to easily retrieve information about Googlebot requests.

Installation Steps

composer require itsjjfurki/google-crawl-detector

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Itsjjfurki\GoogleCrawlDetector\GoogleCrawlDetectorServiceProvider"

php artisan migrate

php artisan googlecrawlerips:fetch

Lets not forget to add the following to the .env file at the root of your Laravel project.

GOOGLE_CRAWL_DETECTOR_ENABLED=TRUE

After these steps, you can fetch information regarding Google crawls using Itsjjfurki\GoogleCrawlDetector\Models\GoogleCrawl; model.

That's it! Enjoy!