Getting the most out of Search Log Analysis and Google Analytics

24 September 2007 - By Sean Fishlock

"Search analytics", search log analysis and clickstream analysis, when used effectively, can be one of the best tools in your marketing arsenal.  I'll briefly explain what it is, why it is so important and how you can use them to best effect.

The search box.  It is an essential part of any large website and what millions of people a second use to find web pages on Google. 

People search for things in all sorts of ways and what people search for can be effected by all sorts of things including language, including regional variations, user associations, jargon and even the level of education of your users.  The keywords and key phrases that your website visitors use can tell you all sorts of things about what they expect to find on your site and how they expect to interact with the information.  In the industry, we call this the science of "search analytics" or search log analysis, and when used effectively, it can be one of the best tools in your marketing arsenal.

On your website a search box can also sometimes be a catch-all for poor navigation.  If people are using one on your website frequently, then it can indicate that your users are frustrated and you know that your content and structure may be the source of the problem.  Bad website navigation can cost you customers and sales.  But looking at what users are searching for can help you to improve your website and increase user satisfaction.  So even on the smallest of websites, it is worth including some sort of search just for these reasons.

Consider some examples.  The Brimbank City Council website mentions "Privacy and FOI" as a main menu item.  Now not every resident is going to know what FOI means, I'd say there is few.  If they are such a user and want access to council minutes (which is in this section), then they may miss this information entirely and go for the search, or worse still, call customer service, tying up valuable resource time.  Without a search box on the page (just a link on the main menu), measuring this audience can become difficult.   You should be able to see through your search logs the number of time certain words are used to find this page.   You can then use this information to tune and tweak your website's menus pages or product categories. 

There are plenty of search log statistics programs out there that have been available for many years.  Webalizer, AWStats to name just a few.  They often feature graphs and lots of top lists to represent the data in your website log files, but what they often don't do is help explain what the information means.  There is a difference between statstical programs and services which help you to analyse and make use of it.  Google Analytics is a great free tool for measuring the performance of your website.   It provides useful information on the trends of your users through a site.   Of particular interest in these tools are two things 1) user paths, the most popular routes through the site (also known as clickstream analysis), and 2) analysis of keywords and other relevant statistics on a per page basis.  Thes things differentiate analytics programs from simple web log tools.  They are particularly useful as knowing which keywords people used to find a particular page can tell you how to make the page easier to find. 

So how can these things help your business, well, I'll quickly explain.

These things can help you to form a more user-centred design approach or help you to evolve your website navigation to maximise selling and or cross-selling opportunities.

This sort of information is also key to your search engine optimisation.  Afterall, what your customers are looking for on your site are usually the same things that they will be searching for on Internet search engines like Google, Altavista or All the web.  Understanding what keywords people use can be critical to refining your keyword marketing campaigns for cost-per-click advertising (such as Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing) for example.  Google's Adsense for Seach service even lets you make money just by adding a Google search to your website and using it to serve up context advertising ads (refer to my earlier blog on tips on context advertising).  Some of these services do offer nifty tools that can simplify the tweaking and optimising of keywords for you, but in the end only you understand your industry and the goals of your company, so the ability to understand or have a web developer that understands search analytics can give you a definite competitive edge. 

Areas of your website which may require consideration based on search analytics include the domain name, main menus, titles of pages, content on pages, metadata keywords and much more.  Some have both practical and strategic marketing applications.

Like Analytics, our Freestyler CMS is capable of logging each and every search query, something often overlooked by other content management software.  This gives you invaluable information on what your users are looking for, and the deficiencies of your navigation system.  It features a dedicated "Search Engine Optimisation and Metadata tab, enabling you to optimise each and every page on your site.  You can use this information to add keyword metadata to help users find the pages they are looking for.  We have had plenty of experience which can be used to help you to understand the information and use it to optimise both your site's navigation and and online marketing campaigns.

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