Interpreting search term demand signals

The Searched Keywords report groups your online store's saved searches by search text. The report helps you find frequently asked questions, low-result searches, and potential gaps in product names, synonyms, assortment, or search settings.

Run the Searched Keywords report

The Searched Keywords report can be found in the Reports view of the Dashboard.

1. Open Reports and find Searched Keywords .
2. Select Run Report .
3. Set the date range. The default is the last 30 days.
4. Check the result in the Preview tab or open Export and select Download CSV .

The preview may only show a portion of the rows. Use CSV export when you need the entire selected period for further analysis.

Read the search text summary line

Each row in the Searched Keywords report represents one saved search text. The columns are:

• Keywords : search text used in the online store.
• Number of searches : the number of search events recorded for the search text.
• Number of customers : The number of unique logged-in customer IDs that used the search text. Searches without IDs are not counted in this count.
• Maximum results : the maximum number of results stored for search events in the selected time period.
• Last searched : the time of the last recorded event for the search text in the selected time period.

The rows are arranged by the number of searches from highest to lowest and, in the event of a tie, by keyword. The maximum number of results is not the number of results from the most recent search nor the average of all searches.

Find searches that need fixing

In the Searched Keywords report, it's a good idea to first address frequently occurring terms with low or zero maximum results .

1. Check whether the search text or a clear synonym for it can be found in the product names and search terms.
2. Check spellings, inflections, product numbers, and technical terms used by customers.
3. Find out if the requested product is in the range but hard to find.
4. If the product is not in the range, estimate demand together with purchases, customer feedback and sales data.
5. After the repair, confirm that the correct products are found by searching in a separate store.

A single high number of results can mask other weak search events for the same keyword, as the column shows the highest value for the period. Reliable analysis of zero-result searches requires event-specific data or report correction.

Track demand changes

The Searched Keywords report lets you compare search volumes across campaign and seasonal periods. Run the report for periods of equal length and export the results in CSV format. Combine rows based on exact search text and compare search volume and latest search time.

The report does not return campaign, traffic source, search language, or products clicked and purchased. Therefore, a change in search volume alone does not indicate the impact of the campaign or the commercial success of the search. Confirm your conclusion with analytics and sales data.

What doesn't the report show?

The Searched Keywords report does not have an expandable event view for an individual keyword. The result does not return IP address, individual customer information, individual search time, or the number of results for each search event.

The report groups the search text stored in the database as it is, according to the database's comparison rules. The query also does not normalize spaces, spelling errors, inflections, or synonyms into the same concept.