A method and system are provided for processing computer log messages for log visualization and log retrieval. The method includes collecting log messages from one or more computer system components, performing a log tokenization process on the log messages to generate tokens, transforming the tokens into log vectors associated with a metric space, performing dimensionality reduction on the metric space to project the metric space into a lower dimensional sub-space, storing similarity distances between respective pairs of the log vectors, and in response to receiving a query associated with a query log message for reducing operational inefficiencies of the one or more computer system components, employing the similarity distances to retrieve one or more similar log messages corresponding to the query log message for reducing the operational inefficiencies of the one or more computer system components.