Search Analytics: Gain Insights from User Search Data

Mar 14th 2018 product

By analyzing what your users search for, you can understand what they want and which keywords they use. By looking at how they interact with the search results, you can understand how well your service answers their aspirations.

Most importantly, through search, you can get invaluable feedback about your users’ intent: feedback that accelerates their digital journey, and therefore your revenue. But that’s only true if you’re actively using the data that they’re giving you through search —if you collect, analyze, and surface this data.

Our new Analytics

For the first time, our Analytics feature will track the search flow in its entirety — from beginning to end. We’re not only analyzing the queries that are typed and the filters used, but also the results that are retrieved and how users interact with them. Do people click on the results list? Do they add a product to their cart, or read the article, or watch the video?

Today, we’re releasing a new Analytics functionality, available via API as well as the newly updated front-end dashboard. It is designed to track click and conversion events following a search.

What’s new

Analytics API

Searches. Improve visibility into queries and keywords users type, as well as queries that return zero results. Set up Query Rules for one-off problematic queries — or adjust your searchable attributes to address systemic issues.

Filters. Create faster paths to conversion by predefining filters on specific keywords based on the most popular filters users are selecting when searching.

Results. Improve relevance on every query by using insights into results users see when performing a search. Identify and analyze low quality search results and find problematic queries such as common typos, obscure queries and query reformulations in order to improve content and relevance.

Click Analytics API

Clicks. Gain insights into what results users are clicking on, what position those results appear in, and the average click position of specific search queries

Conversions. Join search and conversion data in order to understand which search results are converting, and improve search queries that lead to users abandoning

Why it’s useful

There are two main ways search analytics provide value: by giving you actionable business insights, and by helping you improve the relevance of your search engine.

Business insights

By analyzing the queries that your users are typing, you can get insights that will be useful across your business:

Improve your catalog of product or content. For example, an e-commerce platform could realize that a specific product is often asked by customers and that they should add it to their catalogue. A news outlet can learn more about the topics that their audience wants to read more about.
Improve SEO. If your users are searching for certain words on your website, chances are these words are also the ones they type into Google.
Fuel your merchandising and marketing initiatives. Noticing the popularity of thematic words like “healthy”, “cheap”, or “revolutionary” can drive your future campaigns.

Improve the relevance of the search

Analytics surfaces easy paths to improving your search relevance:

The query “couch” returns no result? Perhaps you’re missing the “sofa” synonym for “couch”.
The Click Rate on the query “tomato” is lower than you’d like? Perhaps your relevance configuration retrieves “tomato soup” higher than actual tomatoes, and you need to improve your relevance strategy.
The articles most surfaced by your search don’t correspond to your best articles? You could update your ranking to showcase these more.

It’s only the beginning!

Ever since we’ve started Algolia, our goal has been to focus on making the best possible search engine, and our new Analytics feature is another step on that path. It adds a new dimension to the strong foundation of our engine: textual and business relevance, speed and reliability.

We can’t wait to see how you use Analytics to make meaningful improvements to your search experience and to your business. And we certainly plan to guide you along the way and help you make the most of the insights surfaced by your analytics.

Join our webinar on April 5 to discover how Search Analytics help drive conversion rates. Also, check out the following resources or contact us for a demo:

Don’t hesitate to get in touch and share your questions and feedback: shoot us an email, tweet to us, comment on this post.

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