Setting up Site Search in Google Analytics

If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a thousand times: Google Analytics can provide a tremendous amount of insight on who’s visiting your site and their activity once they get to it. But if you don’t know how to access the platform’s benefits, they can’t be of any help. Learning to analyze your results is critical for understanding and improving users’ experience on your website.

Here’s how to to set up a Google Analytics Site Search:

  1. Go to the website and identify your Query Parameters. Query Parameters appear at the end of a URL following a question mark. You may see your keyword in a pattern that looks like the following:

FOR EXAMPLE: http://wemounttvs.com/?s=potato . So for this client, their query parameter is ‘s’

  1. Log into Google Analytics. (If you’ve lost access, here are some tips for regaining it.)
  2. Click on a ‘Admin.’
  3. Select ‘View Settings.’
  4. Scroll down until you see ‘Site Search Settings.’

See screenshot: https://screencast.com/t/8bP7ZsnpXmDX

  1. Turn on Site Search Tracking.
  2. Enter the Query Parameter that you identified before into the Query Parameter field.
  3. Click ‘Save.’

You  should be able to see data start populating within the next few days. For more information on setting up site search tracking, here are some reference articles from LunaMetrics and Google.