Using internal search reports

  Written by The Jahia Team
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An internal search is the search term, or set of words, that a user enters when searching for content on your website. jExperience provides detailed information about those searches including who, where, and when those searches occurred, and what the search terms are. Searches made by visitors are captured in real time.

Internal search reports do not require any configuration or action from you once jExperience is active.

Note: You can also view information about search terms entered on external search engines in Interpreting incoming search terms.

Viewing internal search reports

To access internal search reports:

  1. In Site Settings, navigate to jExperience>Metrics>Internal searches.
  2. On the Internal Searches page, you can sort the table by any of the following columns:
    • Search term
      The search term that a user entered on your site
    • Occurrences
      The number of searches that contain the search term
    • Importance
  3. To filter internal searches by date, use the start and end date calendars 
  4. To see details about a specific search term, click Search details 
    . The Search details page has the following tabs:
    • Origins
      Shows the page from which the search was requested and the number of occurrences and importance of each search.
    • Profiles
      Shows the list of visitors that have performed the search and the number of occurrences and importance of each search. If the visitor is identified, their first and last name display under Profile. Otherwise, the visitor's ID displays.

      You can also click on Edit profile 
       to open a visitor's profile. You can return to the Search details page by clicking on the arrow next to  profile.
    • Languages
      Shows the language version of your site when the search was performed and the number of occurrences and importance of each search.

Note that search terms can be misleading because:

  • The same words may have a different meaning in different languages
  • Visitors may enter searches in a certain language, while navigating your site in another language

You can view the language of the page in which a search was performed to compare it against the language of the searched term and to get a better understanding of your visitor's behavior.

Interpreting internal search reports

Internal searches provide valuable information about how user's navigate and find information on your site. You can use the following methods to improve how users search your site:

  • Analyze the most frequent searches
    Look at the most frequent search terms and try to understand if users exhibit normal behavior, for example, using the search form to navigate more quickly. Alternatively, do search terms reveal that users have not found the information they expected to find. If so take a closer look at your content, navigation, and wording. Another reason could be that the content exists, but users enter search terms that differ from the vocabulary used on the site.
  • Analyze where searches were performed
    If a search has been performed primarily from a specific location, such as a page or section, that can reveal the inability of visitors to find the information they were seeking.
    Searches executed on the home or top-level pages of your site tend to be less significant and may reveal that people are using the search feature mostly for convenience.
  • Look at search results quality to see if users have been satisfied
    Act a tester and try searching the most searched terms on a regular basis to review the returned results. Ensure that search results seem correct and lead to the pages you expected to find.
    If the pages returned by the search feature do not seem appropriate, then you should take action. For example, if the searched content simply does not exist, then write additional relevant content. If your content exists but is not searchable, consider using tags and more meaningful words in your content.

You can also use search terms to engage your visitors and provide personalized experiences.

  • Use search terms to engage your visitors
    Use a search term as a condition for a personalized experience or one-to-one conversation.  In the profiles database, each search request is associated with the visitor who performed the search. You can use that information to optimize the user experience. For example, extract all the users who searched for a product and send an email campaign with a promotional coupon. Personalize an area on your home page so the next time one of those users visits your website, they will see information that they searched on during previous visits.
Limitations: If you use jExperience and Jahia with an external search, search requests will not be captured by default. To capture search requests, a search event must be sent to jExperience. Such search events can be implemented by your developers and triggered from the external platform. A search event consists of the search string and is sent to jExperience.