How to track searches within your site

Discovering the effective usage of each of your web pages is important to find out which parts of your website or blog are most successful.

Nevertheless, your curious visitors would use the search function of your website, and you want to know what exactly they are looking for.


It is common that your readers search for articles, products, events and other stuff you have not included yet in your blog / website.

Consequently, you will immediately need to list all keywords entered in your internal search engine. How ?

Every search query can be found in the URL. Searching "track" in this blog will result in the following address :

http://www.khalilgdoura.com/search?q=track

A common part of search URLs is "q", this is called "query parameter". If your site is built with Joomla, the query would be "searchword".

How to take advantage of query parameter ?

In the case you use Google Analytics, simply :

1 - Go to "Analytics Settings".
2 - Click on "Edit" near your site profile.
3 - Again, click on "Edit" in the "Main Website Profile Information" menu.
4 - Check "Do Track Site Search".
5 - Enter the specific query parameter of your website.
6 - "Save changes".

It's done, now when you visualize your report, you can find the complete list of searches in your website related to the date range you set :

1 - Click on "Content", on the left menu.
2 - Click on "Site Search".
3 - Enjoy advanced metrics!

Some search metrics given by Google Analytics reports

Regardless to your preferred analytics tools, keep on mind that search queries are just urls like any existing page of your website.

You can always sort your viewed pages as to get the list of URLs related to searches, which all begin with the query parameter.

Now, you can easily keep an eye on your visitors' information needs and then, you will efficiently improve your content. The closest you are to your audience, the more loyal it will be.

See you! :)