Search analytics is the use of search data to investigate particular interactions among Web searchers, the search engine, or the content during searching episodes. The resulting analysis and aggregation of search engine statistics can be used in

search engine marketing Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) primarily through paid advertising. SEM may incorporate search engine op ...

(SEM) and

search engine optimization Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic (known as "natural" or " organic" results) rather than dire ...

(SEO). In other words, search analytics helps website owners understand and improve their performance on search engines based on the outcome, for example identifying highly valuable site visitors, or understanding

user intent User intent, otherwise known as query intent or search intent, is the identification and categorization of what a user online intended or wanted to find when they typed their search terms into an online web search engine for the purpose of search ...

. Search analytics includes search volume trends and analysis, reverse searching (entering websites to see their keywords), keyword monitoring, search result and advertisement history, advertisement spending statistics, website comparisons,

affiliate marketing Affiliate marketing is a marketing arrangement in which affiliates receive a commission for each visit, signup or sale they generate for a merchant. This arrangement allows businesses to outsource part of the sales process. It is a form of ...

statistics, multivariate ad testing, et al.

Data collection

Search analytics data can be collected in several ways. Search engines provide access to their own data with services such as

Google Analytics Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic, currently as a platform inside the Google Marketing Platform brand. Google launched the service in November 2005 after acquiring Urchin. As o ...

Google Trends Google Trends is a website by Google that analyzes the popularity of top web search query, search queries in Google Search across various regions and languages. The website uses graphs to compare the search volume of different queries over time. ...

and Google Insights. Third-party services must collect their data from

ISP An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...

's,

phoning home In computing, phoning home is a term often used to refer to the behavior of security systems that report network location, username, or other such data to another computer. Phoning home may be useful for the proprietor in tracking a missing or st ...

software, or from scraping search engines. Getting traffic statistics from ISP's and phone homes provides for broader reporting of

web traffic Web traffic is the data sent and received by visitors to a website. Since the mid-1990s, web traffic has been the largest portion of Internet traffic. Sites monitor the incoming and outgoing traffic to see which parts or pages of their site are ...

in addition to search analytics. Services that perform keyword monitoring only scrape a limited set of search results, depending on their clients' needs. Services providing reverse search, however, must scrape a large set of keywords from the search engines, usually in the millions, to find the keywords that everyone is using. Since search results, especially advertisements, differ depending on where you are searching from, data collection methods have to account for geographic location. Keyword monitors do this more easily since they typically know what location their client is targeting. However, to get an exhaustive reverse search, several locations need to be scraped for the same keyword.

Accuracy

Search analytics accuracy depends on service being used, data collection method, and data freshness. Google releases its own data, but only in an aggregated way and often without assigning absolute values such as number of visitors to its graphs.

logs and phone home methods are accurate for the population they sample, so sample size and

demographics Demography () is the statistical study of populations, especially human beings. Demographic analysis examines and measures the dimensions and dynamics of populations; it can cover whole societies or groups defined by criteria such as ed ...

must be adequate to accurately represent the larger population. Scraping results can be highly accurate, especially when looking at the non-paid, organic search results. Paid results, from Google Adwords for example, are often different for the same search depending on the time, geographic location, and history of searches from a particular computer. This means that scraping advertisers can be hit or miss.

Market conditions

Taking a look at Google Insights to gauge the popularity of these services shows that compared to searches for the term

Adwords Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) is an online advertising platform developed by Google, where advertisers bid to display brief advertisements, service offerings, product listings, or videos to web users. It can place ads both in the result ...

(Google's popular search ad system), use of search analytics services is still very low, around 1-25% as of Oct. 2009. This could point to a large opportunity for the users and makers of search analytics given that services have existed since 2004 with several new services being started since.

Calculations

:Sessions with Search = The number of sessions that used your site's search function at least once. :Percentage of sessions that used internal search = Sessions with Search / Total Sessions. :Total Unique Searches = The total number of times your site search was used. This excludes multiple searches on the same keyword during the same session. :Results Pageviews / Search = Pageviews of search result pages / Total Unique Searches. :Search Exits = The number of searches made immediately before leaving the site. :Percentage of Search Exits = Search Exits / Total Unique Searches :Search Refinements = The number of times a user searched again immediately after performing a search. :Percentage Search Refinements = The percentage of searches that resulted in a search refinement. Calculated as Search Refinements / Pageviews of search result pages. :Time after Search = The amount of time users spend on your site after performing a search. This is calculated as Sum of all search_duration across all searches / (search_transitions + 1) :Search Depth = The number of pages viewed after performing a search. This is calculated as Sum of all search_depth across all searches / (search_transitions + 1) Google Analytics: How Site Search metrics are calculated?
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Search Analytics Audience measurement Search engine optimization Market research Promotion and marketing communications

Data collection

Accuracy

Market conditions

Calculations

See also

References