This is just a very quick post while it is fresh in my mind.

I have just listened to a short podcast with Lou Rosenfeld on analysing your internal search analytics i.e. the searches users perform once they are on your site. This seems like an interesting concept people are already familiar with looking at site analytics how can internal search analytics help you?

The main points I learned were:

1. Look at the most frequent queries

Rank the internal search terms by most frequent to least frequent and then you should:

• Optimize the most frequent queries
• Think about how to make better sign posts or navigation to the most requested content
• Perform the top queries yourself on your website and see if there is anything missing

2. Use the internal searches to determine your user’s intent

By looking at the search terms you can determine what your users are trying to do once they arrive on your site.

3. Use searches to influence meta data or taxonomy

If you see patterns in your searches this can influence your meta data or categorisation if you do a content overhaul. The example given was a mail order catalogue that did not have sku on their website and they noticed a lot of sku searches. They went into the field and found that users were getting the sku from their catalogue while browsing and trying to purchase online.