Mistake: comparing log timestamps to GSC without fixing the timezone

Mistake: comparing log timestamps to GSC without fixing the timezone

A classic reason your "crawl spike" never lines up with Search Console. Sources worth your time:

→ Apache mod_log_config docs — Default %t writes server local time with an offset like +0000. If your box is on local time, your day boundaries drift.
Takeaway: normalize everything to UTC before any daily rollup.

→ Google Search Central (Crawl Stats report) — Crawl Stats are bucketed in Pacific time, not your server's.
Takeaway: don't expect log midnight and GSC midnight to align — they won't.

★ Pick of the week — GoAccess config — Its --tz flag and date-format options let you re-bucket on read.
Takeaway: set TZ once at parse time so awk, GoAccess and your charts all agree.