The SearchStax Site Search solution’s Searches screen summarizes the user actions the Search App has accumulated over the selected period.
Analytics displays refresh every hour! The Site Search analytics tables and graphs update once per hour.
Interpreting Analytics
Interpreting user behavior through analytics history is an art. See these SearchStax blog posts for insight into your website users’ behavior:
- Content Gap Analysis: How to Avoid Gaps in Your Content Strategy
- Introducing Smart Match Assist: AI-Powered Query Optimization for SearchStax Site Search
- Site Search Data Unveiled: 7 Key Insights into Your Website Visitors’ Behavior
- Website User Experience – Data and Trends
Summary Statistics
The summary table at the top of the page presents a high-level overview of search success over a configurable time period.
- Total Sessions: Total search sessions during the selected time period.
- Total Searches: There can be multiple searches per session.
- Searches per Session: Total Searches divided by Total Sessions.
- Searches with Clicks: Number of searches that ended with a click-through event.
- Click-Through Rate: Percent of Total Searches that ended in a click-through event.
- Average Click Position: Average of the positions of the items that were clicked in the list of results.
- % No Results: Percent of Total Searches that produced zero results.
- MRR: Mean Reciprocal Rank. The average of 1/Click Position for all click-through events. It normalizes the score to the range 0 to 1, with 1 being best.
Most Popular Searches
The Most Popular Searches list presents the queries users submitted most frequently during the time interval.
- Searches: Queries typed into the search field.
- Search Count: Number of times this term was submitted in the designated time interval.
- Of Total: Percent of all searches in the time interval.
Why Similar Queries May Appear Separately
Analytics shows search terms the way people typed them. For example, if one person searches for Apple and another searches for apple, those can appear as two separate entries.
This doesn't necessarily mean the search experience treated them differently. It means the report keeps the original capitalization instead of combining similar-looking searches automatically. You may notice this in places like Most Popular Searches and No Results Searches.
If you want one total for those variations, you'll need to combine them manually in your reporting.
Empty Searches
In analytics, an empty search request is a search submitted with no characters entered. Depending on the implementation or reporting context, this may appear as an asterisk (*) or as a blank query entry.
Empty searches usually happen when users submit a search with no input, submit only spaces that are trimmed before the query is sent, or use a search experience that sends a blank search on page load.
Spikes can follow frontend or tracking changes that start recording empty searches that were already happening.
Empty searches can appear in Most Popular Searches, No Results Searches, totals, and trend charts. For the fuller explanation of what empty searches mean, what causes them, and when to investigate further, see Understanding Empty Searches in Site Search Analytics. This entry isn't the same as a user-entered wildcard query. See Wildcard Search.
Search Details
Click on an item to expand and view the results users eventually selected.
The summary statistics across the top of the page are:
- Total Searches: Total Number of Search Requests in the selected time interval. These include searches with results and searches with no results
- Total Searches with Clicks: Total Number of Searches with at least one click on a result item.
- Total Clicks: Total Number of clicks on the Search Results that were shown to the user
- Click-through Rate: The percentage of tracked searches that generated at least one click on a result. Mathematically, it is (Number of searches with at least 1 click / Total Searches) * 100
- Average Click Position: Average of the positions of the impressions that were clicked in the list of results
The Search Details display shows twenty users typed in “Save Draft.” Eight of those users clicked on one of the results.
- Item Title: The title of a document that users clicked after searching for the keyword.
- Impression Count: The number of times this item was presented to users in search results.
- Average Click Position: Average position of this item when users selected it.
- Click Count: Number of times users clicked this item.
- Click Through Rate: Percent of clicks divided by Impression Count.
Use the browser’s “back” button to return to the Analytics > Search page.
No Results Searches
The Analytics > Searches screen also lists No Result Searches. (Users looked for something that wasn’t in your index.)
The View Recommendations button displays the output of the Smart Match Assist feature, which uses AI to generate queries similar to the ones in the table but that would have produced results.
Searches with No Click
Scroll down one more screen to view the list of searches that produced results, but the user didn’t click on anything.
See our Analytics Glossary for a list of all SearchStax Site Search metrics.
Questions?
Do not hesitate to contact the SearchStax Support Desk.