One of the lesser know features for SharePoint Online is the ability to look at the crawl log. For on-premises SharePoint, scanning the crawl log is something any search troubleshooter knows how to do, and something I’ve often heard is an ask for SharePoint Online.
A typical scenario is someone asking why their file does not show up in search, or why a user profile hasn’t been updated in search. The crawl log won’t solve these issues, but might give you hints and insights for further troubleshooting as you can see any warnings or errors, and see at what time the item in question was last crawled.
Over two years ago I created a SharePoint App which allows you to search the crawl log and trigger re-indexing (https://store.office.com/en-us/sharepoint-online-search-toolbox-by-puzzlepart-WA104380514.aspx), but I figured the time was right to share this with the world – hence the June release of PnP PowerShell introduced the new cmdlet Get-PnPSearchCrawlLog. But if you fancy a UI, the app is still there :)
Test it for yourself or take a look at the demo I did yesterday at the PnP sig call.
