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How to set up and use Monsido Site Search

Updated over a week ago

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Introduction

Use the Statistics module to see what visitors search for when they use the search feature on your website. Track the actions that visitors take, if any, after they perform a search.

Use this data to make informed decisions about website content and determine if you need to add, remove, or adjust content to meet the needs of your visitors.

This feature lets you:

  1. View a list of all terms that visitors search for.

  2. View the number of times (occurrences) that each term was searched for.

  3. View the average amount of search result pages that visitors receive for each term.

  4. For each term, view the percentage of visitors who leave the website immediately after they perform a search.

  5. Filter data based on:

    • Search term

    • Number of occurrences

    • Percentage of search exits.

  6. Download/export site search data.

  7. Apply a date range filter to site search data.

  8. Search for a specific search term.

  9. Visualize site search data in a bar chart (the number of entries will often be in the 100s or 1000s).

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Prerequisites

This list tells what is needed for Monsido to be able to track searches on your website:

  1. The Monsido script needs to be present on your website, and the Statistics feature needs to be enabled.
    For instructions, see the user guide articles:

  2. Your website must have a search option. When a user does a search, the search results must be displayed on a dedicated search results page. The search results page needs to use a URL parameter that contains the search query.
    For example, if a visitor searches for the word "holiday", the search results page URL must contain "holiday". It could be something like: domain.com/search?search=holiday or domain.com/s?q=holiday, and so on.

  3. You must be able to add a script to your search results page.

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Site Search Setup

This section gives instructions on how to set up Site Search.

  1. Make sure your website and Monsido configuration meet the prerequisites.

  2. In your CMS (website builder software), locate your search results page.

  3. Add the following script to your search results page in the <body> tag:
    ​

    <script>
    window.addEventListener('mon-script-loaded', () => { 
    const urlSearchParams = new URLSearchParams(window.location.search); const params = Object.fromEntries(urlSearchParams.entries()); 
    if (params.searchString) { window.monsido_functions.trackSearch(params.searchString); 
    }
    });
    </script>

  4. To make the script track site searches properly, you need to modify it slightly. Replace searchString with the search query parameter that is used on your website.
    To find this, do a search on your website and look at the URL of your search results page. The search query parameter name typically appears between the characters ? and = in the URL. Here are two examples:
    ​
    ​Example 1
    On this search results page, the query parameter name is keys.


    ​Example 2
    On this search results page, the query parameter name is cludoquery.


    Please note that searchString appears in two places in the script and you need to replace it in both places.
    ​
    If we assume that our query parameter name is keys, the script should be modified so that it looks like this:
    ​

    <script>
    window.addEventListener('mon-script-loaded', () => { 
    const urlSearchParams = new URLSearchParams(window.location.search); const params = Object.fromEntries(urlSearchParams.entries()); 
    if (params.keys) { window.monsido_functions.trackSearch(params.keys); 
    }
    });
    </script>


    ​For more information, see our developer docs section for advanced instructions:

    Monsido for Developers - Site Search.
    ​

  5. Publish your website. Monsido is now tracking site searches.

  6. In Monsido > Statistics > Content > Site Search, you can view a list of the terms and phrases your visitors have searched for. The table contains the following information:

    • Search term: The word or phrase that visitors searched for.

    • Searches: The number of times the particular term has been searched for.

    • Average no. of results pages viewed: When a visitors perform a search, they sometimes get several pages of search results. This field gives an average of how many search results pages that your visitors viewed for the search term. To track this data, you need an advanced script setup.
      ​For more information, see our developer docs section for advanced instructions:

      Monsido for Developers - Site Search.

    • % of search exits: The percentage of visitors who left the website (bounced) immediately after they did the search.

It may take up to 24 hours for search data to appear in the Monsido interface after a visitor does a search.

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How to Use Site Search

This section gives instructions on how to use the Site Search feature in the Statistics module.

  1. Navigate to the Dashboard for your domain.

    The full dashboard view.

  2. Locate the Statistics section and click to open it, or click Statistics (the broken pie chart icon) on the page menu bar:

    This is the Statistics landing page.

  3. Click the date on the upper right-hand side of the page to change to a specific date span.

    The location of the date picker, on the upper right-hand side of the window.

  4. This view shows:

    • A graph of the total number of visits in the last 30 days

    • Most visited pages

    • Traffic Sources

    • Most Frequent.

For more information and setup instructions for the Statistics module, see:

Statistics Feature Setup.

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Site Search

  1. From the menu on the left, select Content.
    ​

    The location of the Content option on the left menu.

  2. The menu expands. Select Site Search.
    ​

    The location of the Site Search button.

  3. The Site Search page opens.

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Site Search Categories

The landing page helps users to view the data collected and visualize the site search data in a bar chart.

The Site Search landing page with bar chart.

The bar chart shows the following:

  1. Search Term - View a list of all terms that visitors searched for.

  2. Searches - View the number of times (occurrences) each term was searched for.

  3. Average number of results per pages viewed - View the average amount of search result pages that visitors browse for each term.

  4. Percentage of visitors staying after a search - For each term, view the percentage of visitors who stay on the website after they perform a search.

In addition, users can also:

  • View the average amount of search result pages that visitors browse for each term.

  • Sort the columns to show smallest or largest data first.

  • Download/export Site Search data.

  • Apply a date range filter to search within.

  • Search for a specific Site Search term.

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Additional Resources

For instructions on how to set up the Statistics module, see the user guide articles:

For definitions and explanations of acronyms and abbreviations used in the Monsido user guide, see:

Glossary.

For further assistance, contact the Monsido support team at support@monsido.com or use the Monsido chat and help features inside the application.

Image of the toolbar with the Help Center buttons highlighted.

Monsido Contact Information

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