How to set up Site Search in Google Analytics and its benefits
Now you have set up goals in Google Analytics, in this article we will be showing you how to set up Site Search. Many website such as shopping websites, blogs and forums feature a site search box. They are used so that users can access the information they require as quickly as possible without using a navigation structure. Site search boxes are typically found near the top left or right of the website. Google Analytics can be used to track what users type into your site search box. This information can benefit you in a number of ways:
- Find out the most/least searched terms on your website
- Give an indication into products/pages which are not easily found using the navigation
- Find out about popular products which are searched for. If you don’t sell them, you could be missing out on potential sales
Site Search is not tracked by default in Google Analytics, but can be set up relatively easily.
To set up Site Search on Google Analytics you need to click ‘Edit’ from the ‘Main Website Profile Information’ section of the ‘Profile Settings’ page. Under the heading you will need to click ‘Do track site search’ and enter the query parameters, which Google Analytics will use to track your site search pages.
Your query parameters can be found by performing a site search on your website and looking at the URL:
When typing in ‘example’ in the site search, the following URL is displayed. The letter ‘s’ is used on this website as a query parameter and is therefore entered into the ‘Query parameter’ box, under the Site Search heading. Other parameters could include ‘q’, ‘search’, ‘term’ or ‘query’. This depends on the way your website has been built.
Once this has been entered you can save the changes and the Site Search feature in Google Analytics will now track what users type into your site search box.
For a step by step guide of how to set up Site Search in Google Analytics, please see: https://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=75817&hl=en_US
Note carefully: to enable Site Search on the new version of Google Analytics you need to:
- Click ‘Settings’ – which is on the right hand side of the page in the orange navigation bar
- Click the ‘Profile Settings’ tab
At the bottom of the page you will see the following ‘Site Search Settings’ heading where you can enter the ‘Query parameter’ and click ‘Apply’.
In the last article in this series of blog posts on setting up an effective Google Analytics account, we will be addressing the issue of ecommerce tracking.
Gareth Evans
SEO Programmer
