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| Look to Site Search to learn visitors' intentionsby Stephanie Lummis |
Many people using Analytics pay attention to the keywords that get users to their web site – but what about the keywords searched on the site? These two lists will likely have little in common. Site searches are more specific and give insight into visitors’ intentions.
Site Search is used to gather information about visitors when they use the ‘search’ field on your web site. The reports can deliver some very useful information to help you analyze how people use the search functionality on your site and identify potential holes in your content.
Key metricsSite Search is located in the Content section of the navigation and reports on a number of stats:
- Usage – This shows you the percentage of visits to your site that include a search. Typically, this number should be very low. Most visitors don’t head straight for the search box, preferring instead to scan the page to see if the keyword in their head (or related keywords) appears on the page. A search indicates inability to find that keyword.
What constitutes a ‘high’ usage rate depends on the type of site you have. Ecommerce sites tend to have higher rates as people have specific products in mind. If your results are good and people are converting from search, you’ll want to encourage more use. For a typical information web site, try to keep the usage rate under 10%. A high rate could indicate a complex or unsettling design where the user becomes overwhelmed and doesn’t know where to focus.
- Search terms – By identifying which keywords users are searching for, you learn about their intentions and will likely uncover holes in your web site. If people are searching for content that is readily available on your site, consider changing your navigation labels to make it more intuitive to find. You could also create a lure on your homepage to incorporate these words and get people to the content faster.
This report may reveal that people are searching for content that you don’t offer, or using terms to refer to your offerings that were not aware of. Consider whether you should include the new content and terms within your site. You can drill down to see the start and destination pages for each search term.
- Start pages – This shows which pages searches are beginning on. Most of the time this is the homepage, as it is the most common landing or entry page. If there is a page other than home or search results that is frequently appearing, look at the terms that are being searched on from that page to see what expectations are not being met by your content.
- Destination pages - Analyze what pages are being clicked to from the search results. This is a good indication of the success rate of the search. You can see the search term that led to the destination and how the visitor behaved after the search – time on site, average page views, etc. – to evaluate if the visit was successful. A high exit rate (similar to a bounce rate) means visitors are not seeing a relevant search result and are leaving your site.
It is a good idea to check your search results. For common terms where you know your site has quality content to offer, do a search and evaluate the results. Do the most relevant pages appear high in the results? If not, it’s time to invest in some copyediting.
Setting up Site SearchSite Search is enabled in the profile setting section of your account. See Google’s full instructions. In just a few clicks you can make Site Search reports a part of your regular reporting. They are a great indicator of visitor intentions and the health of your content.
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