Track Magento Search Keywords in Google Analytics

Here’s a quick tip for those of you looking to get more information about how your visitors behave on your website. Magento has built in features to track keywords visitors are using to search your site. You can see those keywords by logging in to the Magento admin, and going to Catalog > Search Terms. This is great to see exactly what people are searching for, but the data is not very actionable. Wouldn’t it be great if you could track those keywords in Google Analytics “Site Search” reports and segment those visitors to find which keywords are converting the best? Well, here’s how you do that.

Login to Google Analytics, and click on the profile you want to track site search keywords. Click the Admin tab on the very far right, then choose a website within that profile. Then you need to click the “Profile Settings” tab. At the bottom of that page you’ll see a “Site Search Settings” section. Here’s what you want your settings to look like:

Google Analytics - Site Search Settings

Google Analytics - Site Search Settings

First, select “Do Track Site Search” and we are using the query parameter as “q”. What this means is it’s going to parse any URL within your website that uses the query parameter like: http://www.cornerstonejewelrydesigns.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=purity+rings. Next you’ll want to enable the “Site search categories” and input “cat” as the query parameter. This will allow you to track the categories that the users clicks on after they’ve done their search. For example: http://www.cornerstonejewelrydesigns.com/catalogsearch/result/index/?cat=22&q=earrings. Click “Apply” and that’s it! It could take up to 48 hours to start seeing search results. After that, your results should look something like this:

Google Analytics - Magento Search Terms