Sorry, this is yet another one of these geeky posts talking about the technology behind my website.

Now that you have (hopefully) installed GallerySearch on your TTG powered website, it is time to review what your users are searching for and what they are doing afterwards. There are log files in the /search/log directory, but they only tell a small part of the story. A much more powerful system is the Site Search component of Google Analytics.

The Site Search reports provide information about:

• How many of your visitors use the search engine on your site
• The search terms your visitors use
• How your visitors engaged with your site as a result of their searches (e.g., whether they refined their searches, viewed more pages, or exited)

I hope you already have Google Analytics activated for your site. If not, do this now and then enter your web property-ID in your TTG Lightroom plugins, re-export them and update your site.

Setting Up Site Search for GallerySearch

Once you have a Google Analytics account, you can configure Site Search to support GallerySearch. This article provides step-by-step instructions.

I was a bit lost initially, so here are my steps:

1. Open your Google Analytics account, then select your domain (if you have more than one) and open the Admin panel
2. Select ‘View Settings’ in the ‘View’ panel on the left  side
3. Active the Site Settings

 

Next, the GallerySearch query parameter needs to be added:

Do you have a blog and and have a blog search page too? Don’t forget to add the blog search query parameter to your Site Search Settings:

That’s it! It takes a few days for Google to display your new search data. But before you close your browser, head over to your GallerySearch and blog search pages and perform a few queries. This way you will have some initial data when you look at your search analysis reports.

Using Search Analysis

Hopefully your site has a lot of users that perform regular searches. Google Analytics provides different reports that are all grouped together in Behavior->Site Search.

 

It is only a few weeks ago that I setup Site Search for my site and I don’t have a lot of data points yet. But I am curious to learn more about the behavior of my site’s visitors and what they are looking for.