One of the first recommendations I will make to any client is to add tagging to their internal search tool. Most other reports can tell you what visitors did on your website but internal search reports can help you in understanding what they were thinking.

The obvious starting point is looking at what the most popular search terms are that people are using on your website. This can tell you what the visitors to your website want to get from their visit. It also complement any reports on what the most popular content is on your website. And if people are searching for a topic/product/piece of information on your website which you don’t currently offer, it could be worth adding.

Flipping this around, a report on popular search should be viewed against your prior beliefs on how easy it is to access the key areas on your website. You might believe that it is easy and obvious on how to access a certain page or topic on your website but if people are having to search for it, it can’t be that obvious.

There is more that can be looked at than just the number of times each search term has been used within the website. Other key pieces of information available with on-site search reports include:

• search terms that don’t return any results – if people are searching for content on your site that is there, make sure that your search tool is providing these links.
• relevance of the search terms – are people clicking through on any of the results from their search?
• the proportion of people who are using your search tool – too low and the tool might not be visible enough, too high and people can’t navigate to your content.
• user behaviour for people who use the search tool – are they more likely to perform your key actions on the site?