Introduction
Would you like to know what users search for when they enter your site? Then we have the solution for you!
This valuable information can be obtained through Google Analytics, via a setting directly in the property view.
Here in this article you'll learn how to do it. But first, let's take a look at everything this report can offer us. In the following topics, we'll give you an example, explain how to configure it and also explain it in detail in the following video.
What is it for?
In the image below of a VTEX site, we see that 9% of all user visits had to use the search engine in the last month.
With this data, you can understand if your menu is clear and easy to access, or even if the products featured on your Home are well positioned.
After all, if the user enters the site and finds what they need straight away, they won't need to search for it.
Still analyzing the printout, another piece of information we can see is whether your site's searches are clear from the first search. This information is provided by the percentage of search refinements. In this example, 22.73% of searches were made more than once, i.e. the user had to search twice or more to find the product.
In addition to this overview, we were able to get a detailed view by search termas shown in the figure below. This part can guide us as to which products are being searched for the most, so that we can boost the home and internal pages.
In the figure below, in the Usage Reportwe can see two audiences: the first, who didn't need to search, and the second, who needed to use the site's search engine. Between the two audiences, we can see various metrics, such as revenue generated, bounce rate, pages per session, among others.
Still within this same usage report, we can use a secondary dimension "search term", to break down the metrics in the table above by search term. This allows us to understand which terms actually brought in revenue for our e-commerce. A valuable insight into our audience!
How to implement it?
First, go to Google Analytics, then click on the administrator tab at the bottom left:
After opening this page, go to the last column, in the view. Now click on the first option: "Property view settings":
We've reached the part where we need to go back to our site to find the query parameter. But where exactly can we see it?
I'll show you an example from Pareto's blog:
I entered the site and searched for "Google Ads" in the search bar. Repeat this process on your site.
Once we've done the search, the URL will show a query parameterwhich, in this example, is exactly the letters between the "?" and the "=". This is the code we need to copy and paste into Google Analytics.
After copying and pasting the query parameters, just click save and you're done!
Let's look at another example, just to clarify the concept of the query parameter:
In this url, the parameter is ftso just put ft in the query parameter field in Analytics and save. The data will then start to be computed from the date of configuration.
Conclusion
We've seen how easy it is to set up the search engine in Google Analytics. This way, your company will have valuable insights into user behavior, as well as finding relevant terms for the site.
If you haven't installed it yet, run along and do it now!
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