Tracking site search on your WordPress site can deliver great insights into your customers’ minds. Fortunately, you can easily monitor your WordPress search queries using Google analytics in a matter of a few minutes. Here are the steps to follow. Prerequisite is that you should have integrated Google analytics to your WordPress site. There are also a few search engines for WordPress sites that give search query analytics by default.
Step1– Install google analytics (if you have not installed refer to this article on how to install google analytics in WordPress).
Step2– Click on Admin
Step 3– Click on view settings.
Step 4– Enable site search tracking.
Step 5– Enter query parameter. Usually for wordpress sites, query parameter is “s”. Make a search query and see what your query parameter is. The term between ? and = is your query parameter. In the below image “s” is the query parameter.
Step 6-Enable site search categories. If you have wordpress categories filter in your search results page, you can add the category paramter. It is usually “cat” for wordpress sites. In the following image as you can see the category parameter is “cat” since the category chosen is “Garden-stand” and query parameter is “s”.
Step 7-Enable strip query parameter and category parameter from URL
Thats all!. Now within a couple of days your wordpress site search metrics will be available.
Step 8– To see the search terms, use the google analytics search bar to search for site search. Click on Behavior-> search terms-> Search terms.
Step 9- Now you can see your site search analytics data. Your wordpress search terms will be available in the column name : “Search term” and the count will be available in ” Total unique searches”.
