Search Analytics

Your search generates an enormous amount of data every single day. Every query, every click, every purchase tells a story about what customers want and whether they’re finding it. Search analytics is how you read those stories and use them to improve your business.

Think of search analytics like having a focus group running 24/7. Customers are constantly telling you what they want, what confuses them, and what works. You just need to pay attention.

The numbers that actually matter

Let’s cut through the complexity and focus on the metrics that directly impact your sales.

Search conversion rate is the most important number. What percentage of searches lead to actual purchases? If 100 people search and 20 buy something, that’s a 20% search conversion rate. This tells you how effectively your search turns intent into sales.

Industry benchmarks vary, but for e-commerce, 15-25% is typical. If you’re below 10%, something’s wrong with your search. If you’re above 30%, you’re doing exceptionally well.

Click-through rate tells you if customers find your results relevant enough to click. If people search but don’t click any results, those results aren’t appealing or relevant. Healthy click-through rates are typically 60-80%, most searches should lead to at least one click.

Zero-results rate is critical. What percentage of searches return no results? Every zero-result search is a frustrated customer, probably leaving your site. Target: under 5%. If you’re at 10% or higher, you’re losing significant sales.

Search exit rate shows how many customers leave your site immediately after searching. High exit rates mean search is failing, customers aren’t finding what they want. Compare to your overall site exit rate. If search exit rate is significantly higher, you’ve identified a problem.

What customers are actually searching for

Beyond the numbers, you need to know what people are typing into that search box.

Top searches reveal what drives traffic. Maybe “winter coats” is your #1 search, followed by “Nike shoes” and “laptop bags”. This tells you which products and categories matter most to customers. It should influence what you feature on your homepage, what you stock heavily, and where you focus merchandising efforts.

Trending searches show emerging demand. Maybe “fleece jackets” suddenly spiked 300% this week. That’s an early signal, winter is coming, customers are thinking about warmth, you should feature warm clothing prominently.

Long-tail searches are specific, detailed queries like “waterproof hiking boots women size 8 wide”. These are high-intent searches, customers know exactly what they want. How well does your search handle these specific requests? Long-tail performance is a great indicator of search sophistication.

Failed searches are your biggest opportunity. These are searches that led to no clicks, immediate exits, or zero results. Each failed search represents a customer who wanted to buy but couldn’t find what they needed.

The goldmine of zero-result searches

When someone searches and gets zero results, they’re telling you something valuable. Let me show you what to do with this information:

A customer searches for “running shoes” and gets zero results, but you definitely sell running shoes. The problem: your products are titled “athletic footwear” or “sport sneakers”. Solution: add “running shoes” as a synonym or update product titles.

Many customers search for “tshirt” (no hyphen), but your products say “t-shirt” (with hyphen). Solution: make the search understand these variations as equivalent.

Lots of searches for “yoga mats” but you don’t sell them, just yoga clothes. This is market intelligence, customers want yoga mats from you. Consider expanding your catalog.

Each zero-result search is a clue about vocabulary mismatches, missing products, or search configuration problems. Fix these systematically and watch your conversion rate climb.

Behavioral patterns tell stories

Beyond what people search for, look at what they do after searching:

If customers constantly click the third or fourth result instead of the first, your ranking might be wrong. The best match isn’t appearing first.

If customers search, click a product, immediately return to search, and try again, that first result wasn’t what they wanted. Either the product was mislabeled or the search relevance is off.

If a particular search gets 1000 queries but only 50 clicks total, something’s very wrong with those results. Either they’re not relevant, or they’re not visually appealing.

If searches for a specific brand (“Nike”) show high conversion but general searches (“running shoes”) show low conversion, your brand search works but general search needs improvement.

These patterns reveal where search works and where it fails.

Seasonal and temporal insights

Search analytics show you seasonal patterns you might miss otherwise:

“Sunscreen” searches spike in April-May, weeks before peak summer. This is your signal to feature summer products early.

“Gift” or “present” searches surge before holidays. Prepare gift guides and gift-appropriate product highlighting.

Searches for certain products might peak on specific days of the week. Maybe “work clothes” searches spike Sunday evening as people prepare for the week. Use this timing to adjust featured products.

Monday morning searches might differ dramatically from Friday evening searches. Understanding these patterns lets you tailor the shopping experience to customer mindset.

Using analytics to improve search

Analytics alone don’t help, you need to act on what you learn:

Fix systematic problems: If “sneakers” gets 500 zero-result searches per week, add it as a synonym for “athletic shoes” or whatever you call them.

Boost what customers want: If “waterproof jackets” is trending heavily, create a featured collection or boost those products in search rankings.

Identify catalog gaps: High search volume for products you don’t carry? Consider stocking them. The demand is proven.

Improve product data: If customers search for “blue dresses” but your blue dresses don’t appear, check product titles and attributes. Maybe “azure” or “navy” is used instead of “blue”.

Optimize for mobile: If mobile search has much lower conversion than desktop, investigate why. Are results displaying poorly? Is filtering hard to use?

Setting up useful alerts

Don’t wait for weekly reviews to catch problems. Set up alerts for immediate issues:

Alert when zero-results rate suddenly spikes above 10%. Something broke, maybe a data import failed or search indexing stopped.

Alert when a high-volume search suddenly gets zero results. If “winter coats” suddenly returns nothing, you need to know immediately.

Alert when overall search conversion drops more than 15% compared to last week. Investigate quickly to identify the cause.

Alert when search response time exceeds acceptable limits. Slow search kills conversion.

These alerts let you fix problems before they cost significant sales.

What this means for your webshop

Search analytics transforms search from a black box into a transparent system you can continuously improve. Every week, you identify problems, fix them, and measure the impact. Search gets better month after month.

Modern search solutions like TextAtlas include comprehensive analytics showing you exactly what’s working and what’s not. You can see top searches, failed searches, conversion rates, and behavioral patterns, all in one dashboard.

The data tells you where to focus your efforts. Don’t guess what customers want, look at what they search for. Don’t wonder why conversion is low, see which searches fail. Don’t speculate about product gaps, read what customers can’t find.

Search analytics turns your search into a learning system, constantly improving based on real customer behavior. This isn’t optional anymore, it’s how successful e-commerce works.