Avoiding search misses

In this task, you review your site search statistics for top search misses, and then compensate with synonyms and replacement terms.By reviewing site search statistics, you learn what customers are intending to find on your website when they enter keywords in the search field. You can then make targeted improvements to optimize your site search, improve your site navigation, and ultimately increase conversions.

Before you begin

  1. Site search statistics must be enabled. For instructions on enabling search statistics, see Enabling and configuring site search statistics. This task must be performed by your IT administrator.

  2. You must have existing search term misses, or you must generate your own. To generate your own, open your storefront and enter in a few random terms into your Quick Search search box.

    For example, enter the following words into your site Quick Search, submitting each as a separate query: wallet, wallet, wallet, wristlet, wristlet, wristlet.

    Note: If you are creating your own search misses in a test environment, do as follows:
    • Your IT administrator set the SearchStatisticsBatchInsertSize to an appropriate size relative to the test. An insert size of 1 is acceptable for the provided example.
    • You wait 10 minutes after you center search misses before proceeding. If you run your report too soon after you enter the terms into search, results will appear empty or incomplete.

Procedure

  1. Open the Catalogs tool.
  2. From the explorer view, click Search Term Associations.
  3. Click the Top Search Misses tab.
  4. Set your parameters based on the following table:
    OptionDescription
    Reporting period Specify the time frame for which you wish to view statistics. Pick a time that takes place in the future. Any date that is chosen in the past is not visible. If you specify only the start date, all statistics that are gathered from the start date to the current date are included in the report. If you specify only the end date, all statistics gathered up until the end date are included in the report.
    Keyword You can type a keyword to filter the report to show statistics only for that keyword.

    You can use the asterisk (*) as a wildcard. For example, if you type tab* in the Keyword field, and select Top 5 in the Show top missed keywords list, the report shows the top 5 keyword misses that started with the letters tab.
    Show top missed keywords You can filter the report to show only a subset of top missed keywords, such as the Top 5 missed keywords. The All option shows all keywords that did not have any matching search results during the reporting period.
    Suggested keyword results You can filter the report by using either of these options:
    Show only keywords that had suggested keywords
    Filters the report to show only those keywords for which the search engine returned results by using a suggested keyword.
    Show only keywords that did not have suggested keywords
    Filters the report to show only those keywords for which the search engine did not suggest any keyword. This means that the customer did not see any search results.
    Language Specify the language of the store for which you want to view statistics.

    For example, set the following parameters:

    1. Set the Reporting period from today's date to today's date
    2. Leave Keyword empty
    3. Set Show top missed keywords to all
  5. Click Apply to generate your report.

Results

A table with the top search misses is displayed. From this table, you can identify common failed search patterns and make appropriate adjustments with synonyms and replacement terms.