The internal site search component of Google Analytics is a form of navigation that allows users to search for specific content on your site which can help you understand visitor behaviour to a whole new level and make adjustments accordingly.
The internal search helps you identify:
- keywords not previously identified in paid search campaigns
- keyword associations that visitors have with your website
- ineffective search results
- missing or hidden content that can be added
The internal site search when integrated in Google Analytics provides various reports that help you to see how people search once they arrive at your site. A site that incorporates an internal search feature within the website should set this up using Google Analytics without a shadow of a doubt!
An example here for a query parameter goes like this - https://www.techwyse.com/blog/?s=internet+marketing
Listed below are many of the reports you can use to help gain knowledge and improve your site using Google Analytics Internal Search feature.
The Site Search Overview Report
You can find out which products or services the visitors were looking for, the page they began searching with, where they ended up and whether searches resulted in conversions. The site search overview comprises most of the overall search activity on the website.
Site Search Usage Report
We can gauge the performance of the internal site search through the site search usage metric namely visits without site search and visits with site search with respect to website conversion.
Site Search Term Report
The site search term report includes visits when the search was performed that show the # of unique searches versus the number of search terms, percentage of search refinement, time after search and so on. You can also compare metrics between internal search queries. The metrics that show you the search terms by the visitors once they are on your site help to get more search terms and which help to get more traffic. You have an array of dimensions available like city, country and so on to enhance your site search term report.
Site Search Start Pages Report
The site search start pages lists all those pages where a search was initiated. You can use this report to find out what visitors were searching for from your landing page that can be used to improvise your page content.
Site Search Destination Pages Report
Under this report you are able to see the popular destination page for a particular search term including additional information on the related search. I love this one!
Site Search Category Report
This report helps to analyze which category was chosen by your visitors while a search was implemented, and how successful visitors found what they were looking for while performing a category search.
Site Search Trending Report
There are seven trending reports which display search activity over a period of time that include visits with search, unique searches and time after search. Each report can be viewed on an hourly, daily , weekly or monthly basis.
The Goal conversion metric in the site search report is based on one site search at least, where as goal conversions on all other reports are based on visits to the website.
So take a look - monitor your search results, check your landing pages and see if its doing well for you, or not.
And if you don't have time to do any of this yourself - you know who to call!
on
I am came across this post because I could not figure the Site Search Data in my Analytics. I am wondering how I can leverage this data to optimize my Camp in Google Search Results. I get a decent traffic but no conversions, wondering why? Hope I will work my way out.
on
Nice article with good thoughts on what we can learn from analysing what people search on our website. I found another article that seems to be a good addition to yours. It goes deeper into how you can turn the knowledge of what people search into a profit (what you mention in the first paragraph). And give some good examples. http://webusability-blog.com/analyse-your-site-search-to-increase-roi/
on
I do think that implementing Internal Site Search is important as it is beneficial to both website users and owners. For website users it is the quickest way to find what they’re looking for on a large and complex site while for owners information from user's site searches can be used to make site modifications to improve not only performance and usability, but conversions as well.
on
Thanks Priya for letting us know the benefits of the Search Keywords Reports. This will help us to take actions when :-
1. A Search is done with keywords not related to our website.
2. A Search is done with keywords related to our website but with 'No Results Found' page.
3. Top searched keywords – Relevant content and links to these results pages will give more conversions.
http://www.google.com/sitesearch/ – To learn more about Google Site Search.