What Do People Search For On Your Blog? Find Out With Google Analytics

Few months ago, there was this awesome post i found on a friend's blog, but i couldn't comprehend what the post entails at the moment due to some other scheduled activities i need to go for immediately. Later in the day, i decide to find the post again and i couldn't locate a search box, not even an archive page that can lead me to the post. What a bad idea?

People turns out to search for answer or information, and if there's no means of getting it on your blog, i bet, you are missing a lot. Adding a search box to your site not only offers your site visitors an important ease-of-use feature, but also provides you, the site owner, with powerful insight into what people really expect from your site.

If you don't have a search box on your blog, i recommend you to add Google custom search box, which can provide a better search experience for your visitors and also provide a data for you to work on.

So how do you know what people are searching for on your blog?

I believe you must have register for a Google analytic account but if not, you can sign up for one. Now, you need to run a search on your blog using your search box and look at the url in your address bar. We need to identify the query parameter for your blog.

In the case of this blog, the query parameter is "q" as shown in the screenshot below.

Any letter or word that comes before the equal-to sign (=) is your query parameter, i.e "query parameter=search terms". Some blogs will have their query parameter as "s" or "search".

Now you will need to login into your Google analytic account. At the main navigation bar, click on the "Admin" panel and go to "View Settings".

In your profile settings area, scroll down to where it says "Site Search Settings", enable it, activate "Site search Tracking", put your query parameter in the "Query parameter" box and save your settings.

You have save your settings, how do track your site search activities?

Under "Behavior" section, go to "Site search" and navigate to "Search Terms" to see what people have been searching for. But the report might not comes up immediately, you will have to wait for few hours for Google analytic to gather up the data.

With the information provided, you should be able to see what people expect you to have on your blog and if the information is not available at the moment, you can provide one and with that i think more content ideas will be developed.

Happy tracking and good luck in your blogging journey!

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