Internal search for the site and analysis of its work

Internal search for the site and analysis of its work.

Internal search for a site is important, from the point of view of usability, tool, because with its help visitors can more conveniently use the site, quickly receiving information of interest. However, if such a search works inefficiently, then it does not bring much benefit to the site, which means it is important to regularly analyze its use and take appropriate measures to correct the situation.

Analysis of the search for the site allows you to find out exactly how many visitors the search used while working with the site, what is the ratio of these visitors to the total number of site users, what search queries were entered by visitors, for which of these queries the search did not give visitors an answer, etc. All this data is important for optimizing the site and increasing its conversion.

For example, if a search analysis for a site shows that the proportion of visitors using it is very large, then it will be necessary to modernize (improve) the site navigation system because such an indicator means that the current navigation does not meet the needs of the target audience. And if according to the results of the search analysis for a site, the pages from which visitors turned to the search most often were identified, then this information can also be used to improve the site: you may need to redesign such pages so that visitors can immediately find the required information on them.

When users, resorting to a search on the site, do not find the information they need, this can be an important signal that they should review the product range or rename the offered goods and services so that visitors can find them on the site. Analysis of the search on the site by this criterion will help to identify the problem and begin to eliminate it.

To analyze the performance of site searches, you can use standard web analytics tools, such as, for example, Google Analytics. To do this, you need to configure search tracking in your Google Analytics account (you need administrator rights in the account). It is quite simple to do this: on the account management page, you need to select the account of the analyzed site, open the “Presentation Settings” item in the “View” menu and in the “Site Search Settings” section, select the “Track site search to” ON “switch.

Next, you have to specify in the field “Request Parameter” the parameters of the user search for the site. For example, it can be parameters such as “term”, “search”, “query”, “s”, “q”, etc. You can enter up to 5 parameters at the same time, separated by commas. The type of parameters depends on the user search system used on the site. It is easy to determine the desired parameter by the URL of the page with the search results: it is usually displayed before the “=” sign and the search query by which the search results page is formed on the site. If categories are used in the search for the site, then in the “Category parameter” field you still need to enter the parameters for the internal search by category.

When the custom search tracking setting for the site is complete, Google Analytics will be able to provide the first data in about 48 hours. A report on tracking a site’s search is available in the “Behavior” – “Site Search” tab. In this report you can get acquainted with the data on the number of sessions with the search, the number of unique search queries, the depth of the search, the amount of time spent on the site after performing the search, the pages from which the search was performed, etc.