Log sampling vs reading every line

Log sampling vs reading every line

Full-fidelity feels safer, but it's not always worth it. A look at the tradeoff, with sources.

🔗 Full logs — non-negotiable for rare-event hunting: a single 5xx Googlebot saw at 3am won't survive sampling. Google's crawl-stats team has stressed this for error analysis.
🔗 Sampling — for traffic-share questions ("what % of crawl goes to /tag/ pages"), a 1-in-10 sample from a week of logs gets you within a point or two, as classic statistics promises, at a tenth the processing.

⭐ Pick of the week: the practical split many shops use — sample for the broad ratios, then full-scan only the path or status code the sample flagged.

Takeaway: sample to find where to look; go full-fidelity once you know what you're hunting.