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von Olaf Brandt

Analyzing internal search queries is one of the absolute basics of web analysis. The basic evaluations include answers to the questions:

How often is the search used? What do visitors search for? And especially for stores: How many orders and sales are generated via the search?

The associated measurement of the search function is very easy to set up:

1. Call up automatic recording of the internal search.
2. Transfer search parameters from any search results page and activate measurement.

The analysis shows, among other things, which search terms led to orders.

The evaluations can be used to optimize the search index, to derive keywords for search engine marketing or to make suggestions for expanding your own product range. Search queries without hits are particularly relevant for product range expansions.

To record the number of search hits in etracker analytics or to differentiate between searches with and without results, you can use the Internal search tag in the etracker tag manager. You can find step-by-step instructions here.

Now you can look specifically at the search terms without hits and draw conclusions for optimization. You can also see how tolerant your search is of spelling and typing errors.

The search results page shown above also shows the search time. This could also be recorded together with the search terms. In addition to the quality of the result, speed also plays a decisive role.

Bonus for all store operators: The internal search can also be evaluated at item and category level along the purchase process.

Extended search measurement is usually already integrated in the etracker analytics store plugins. For all other websites and stores, the etracker tag manager also makes it very easy to measure the number of hits. In-depth developer know-how or even intervention in the HTML code is not required.