How to set up Site Search tracking in Google Analytics

Updated on 2021-12-21
note:

This is a video and guide on how to track what people are searching for on your own website using Google Analytics

  1. Click on the Admin cog on the bottom left-hand side. On the right-hand column select View Settings.

  1. Scroll down until you see Site Search Tracking, and turn it on.

  1. Below that you will see Query parameter. for this step we will use an example from the Littledata blog.

  2. For the query, we will take part of the url that is associated with the page that we are trying to track. For example in our blog we search for 'report' and in the url we will see that s=report. The query is everything that is after the question mark and before the equals.

  1. Enter the query in Google analytics and check off Strip query parameters out of url. What that will do is just clean up the mess when it appears in Google Analytics.

  2. Click Save.

  1. You can now see this in action by going to Behavior > Site Search > Overview. This will allow you to see people who searched and what they searched for!

For more information about site search tracking, take a look at our blog!