Search Tools: Analytics

Haven’t you wondered what your users are searching for on your site? How about what users are searching for but not finding? With Finalsite’s Search Analytics feature, these insights - and more - are right at your fingertips.

To access Analytics, go to Search Tools on your Composer menu, then select “Analytics.” This screen contains the search data for the previous seven days. Find out how many searches were made on your site, what the top search queries were, what searches returned few hits, and even what countries the searches originated from. The dates covered by the data are listed in the top-right corner.

In the top blue box, see how many searches were made on your site, how many unique IP addresses those searches came from, and what the average number of searches were for each IP address. This gives you insight into whether a lot of visitors made a few searches (which might indicate problems with your site navigation), or a few visitors searched many times.

Below the blue box, find the Top Searches box on the left. This table tells you what most of your users wanted to find on your site.  Click on any of the column headings to sort by that column.

• “Query” is the search term users entered - allowing for a couple characters of variance in case it was mistyped.
• “Count” is the number of times that search term was entered within the past week.
• “Average Hits” is how many results users received after typing in that query. 

To the right is the “Top Searches Returning Few Hits” table. This shows valuable information about how your site is functioning in response to users’ queries - specifically, it shows when users are coming up empty after entering a search term.

• “Query,” again, is the search term used. If the term received any hits, the number will appear next to it in parentheses.
• “Count” is how many times users searched for that term.

If you have a lot of queries with only a few hits, it may be a sign that you need to reconfigure your content. Or, you can take the opportunity to reconfigure your search.

With Advanced Search Tools you can add synonyms for these search queries, so these poorly performing search terms can be associated with more effective terms that return the desired content. Contact your Client Success Manager to find out more about Advanced Search Tools.

Finally, the bottom of the Analytics page contains an interactive map and a table indicating what countries the previous week’s searches originated from. Countries on the map will be shaded in light-to-dark blue depending on how many queries it had, and the percentage will be shown when you hover over that country. The table displays each country, the query count, and the percentage of searches from that country. Some of the results may surprise you!