Search Statistics Reports

[Marge Milner]

I am a webmaster using Zoom on one client's website. One of the main reasons for using a site search program was to find out what our potential customers are looking for but NOT finding. We don't need pie charts or line charts. We need to know what search words are being used. If customers are looking for more than ten items that we don't carry yet, we would like to know that, not have the report constrained to 10 words showing no results. Also, I am not at the same location as my client, so I really need a text only file that I can send him to show what customers expect to find but are not finding - as well as what they are searching for and finding.

Is there any way to generate a text only file?

Is there any way to report ALL "no results" searches?

Is there any way to report ALL "positive results" search words used in a day or a week rather than just ten?

[Ray]

The searchwords log file created by Zoom is a text-only CSV (comma separated values) file that can be analyzed or processed as you require. You can open this file in any text editor (such as Notepad) or spreadsheet application (such as Excel) and view ALL search words logged. From an application such as Excel, you can even sort by date, IPs, group by number of results returned, or generate your own charts as necessary.

The Statistics Reports tool also has an option to create a listing of searched words, sorted by popularity. You need to check the "List the top ___ searched words" options on the Search Statistics window. You can specify the number of results to list here.

See chapter 2.3.14 and 2.6 in the Users Guide for more information:
http://www.wrensoft.com/zoom/usersguide.html

[Marge Milner]

Thank you.

However, Zoom still only offers the option to list 10 searches returning "No Results. If there are more than 10 "No Results" searches the # over 10 is lumped into a generic "other" indicating there were other searches returning "No Results" but no indication as to what they were. I need ALL the search words returning "No Result."

In the list ALL or a certain # of search words category all you get is all the search words used and an indication of how many times they were used - no indication as to whether or not the visitor found what they were looking for!

[Ray]

As mentioned above, you can import the searchwords log file into a spreadsheet application such as Excel to perform ANY query you require. In Excel specifically, you can do so by clicking on "Data"->"Import External Data"->"Import Data". Make sure to specify the use of "comma" as a delimiter for importing. Consult Excel's Help for "Importing Text Data" for more information.

By doing so, you can easily retrieve all log entries which return no results. Eg. sort the 5th column or filter for "Matches = 0".

We do have plans to add more reporting options for the built-in Statistics Reports in future versions, but we will never be able to cover every possible combination of requirements. The ability to import the data into other applications allows you to do anything that you may specifically need.