If you’re using search widget in your WordPress website you’d probably want to know if site visitors are actually using it. Even better, it would be great to know qhat exactly your website visitors are looking for.
Luckily there is a free WordPress plugin that give all the details of search queries:
- what site visitors look for
- what exact phrases they enter to the search field
- at what time visitors are using site search the most
- how many result articles are displayed in search results for any of the phrases
Continue reading if you want to get these details in your WordPress website too!
How to get WordPress search widget usage statistics in your site
WordPress does not save seach history in it’s database by default. But if you want to start collecting information about the search terms and their results, you need an appropriate plugin.
First step – go to Plugins >> Add New, and enter Search analytics to the search field at the top. Once you find plugin named Search Analytics, hit Install Now.
Just after installing the plugin you won’t get any insights – you’ll need to leave plugin activated for some time to gather the results. And that depends directly on how often visitors are using Search widget in your WordPress website.
If your WordPress blog or a business site has lots of traffic, and search field is easily accessible, you may get some data in a few hours. But if your website has almost no traffic yet, it’s normal that you won’t get any search analytics data for a while.
To view search analytics of your site you’ll need to open Home >> Search analytics in WordPress admin panel. Here how it looks like in one of my tutorial websites which uses the plugin for a few months:
As you see plugin displays exact search phrases (or words), number of searches in a specific time, average number of search results, and when it was last searched for.
You can also compare how many searches are done in, for example, two weeks, and compare the results with previous two weeks. That might be useful if you’re looking for a better place for WordPress search widget.
Plugin can save months or even years of search statistics in your WordPress website. This can help you find new niches for blog posts, offered products, or any other content ideas you might even not thought about, but your site visitors were looking for in your site.
