A new feature from Google Analytics shows how website visitors search on a site once they have arrived.
Now that they are here, how does a site publisher know where those visitors are going? The usual information in access logs helps build a picture of those paths.
Being able to figure out how they may have used a search to get from place to place within a site helps in a couple of ways. If a search led the visitor to a result one might expect them to find, it helped encourage a conversion.
But if the search did not yield a good result, based on other searches the visitor performed, that would indicate a deficiency in one’s site. It’s telling if several visitors search on a given keyword, but don’t end up where they might be expected to land.
The latest feature Google announced for its Analytics product, called Site Search, should be of some help. It picks up the trail of searching after visitors arrive at a site.
“Every time visitors search, they literally tell you in their own words what they are looking for,” Google noted in a blog post. “You’ll not only see their initial searches, but how they attempted to refine searches when they didn’t find what they were looking for.”
The meat of the holiday shopping season begins in less than three weeks. A revelation in Site Search could be the key to tweaking one’s site to capitalize on visitors who are missing out on connecting with what they really want to find.
