This tutorial will show you how to track search queries on your Joomla site.
Often these queries can be a great source of information about what your visitors want:
- They show you what visitors can’t find: If one search term is really popular, it might be because people can’t find it using your current menus … it might be time to add a new menu link.
- They show you what visitors really want: You may think people want “pink widgets” but search terms might show that people really want “blue widgets”.
Technique for Low Traffic Sites
- Step 1: Login to the Administrator area of your Joomla site.
- Step 2: Go to Components >> Search
- Step 3: Click “Parameters” in the top-right corner and set “Gather Search Statistics” to Yes.
- Step 4: Now when you visit Components >> Search you will see a list of all the searches people have used on your site.
Technique for High Traffic Sites
It is also possible to check what people are searching for on your site using Joomla by using Google Analytics:
- Step 1: Go to http://www.google.com/analytics and login.
- Step 2: Click ‘Edit’ under Website Profiles for the profile you would like to enable Site Search for.
- Step 3: Click ‘Edit’ in the top-right corner of the “Main Website Profile Information” bar (warning … its hard to see)
- Step 4: Select “Do Track Site Search”.
- Step 5: Enter “searchword” in “Query Parameter”.
- Step 6: Select “No, do not strip query parameters out of URL”
- Step 7: Your data will appear in your main Google Analytics report, under the Content >> Site Search tab. Your results should look like this:
