How to categorize search terms
This blog article will look at how to use WebSpy’s Profiles to categorize the search terms that users have typed into Search Engines, and add this information to reports.
In previous blogs we have looked at how to report on keywords typed into search engines, and also have a video tutorial on this topic.
We have also looked at what WebSpy’s Profiles are, and how they work.
Getting a report with a list of all the search terms entered can be very interesting, but it can also be very long and repeptitive, so in this blog we will look at categorising the search terms to make it easier to find the information you’re looking for.
Typically WebSpy’s Profiles apply only to the URL string of the website, looking at everything up to the query string (the part after the ?), but not the query string itself. This is because the query string of a URL is usually very long, and could dramatically increase the time it takes to generate any reports or summaries that include Profiles. However, the query string is where the search terms are recorded when you enter keywords in a search engine.
To set up WebSpy’s Profiles to look at the query string part of the URL, we can use a Custom Expression to wrap the existing Site Keyword summary in the Profile function, eg:
Profile([Site.Keyword])
You can add this to any report or summary.
To add this information to any report template:
1. Go to Reports in Vantage, and right-click the template you wish to edit and choose Edit Template. The template must be a web template, for example the Organization template.
2. To add the keywords for the entire company, right-click the root node of the template and choose New Node. Alternatively, to add the keywords only for a specific item or set of items already in the report (eg Users), right-click that node and choose New Node.
3. Select the Summary as Site Keywords, leave the Alias as (none), then click the Advanced button.
4. On the General page under Columns double-click the Site Keywords key row, then set the radio button to Custom Expression, and change the value to: Profile([Site.Keyword]), then click OK
5. To ensure the keywords are only displayed for sites that are Search Engines, go to the Filters page of the dialog and click Add | Field Value Filter
6. Choose the Summary as Site Name, and the Alias as Search Engines, then select the Exclude radio button, and check checkbox for “Non-Search Engine Traffic”, then click OK
7. Click OK to add this node to your report template
To add this information to an analysis in Summaries:
1. Go to Summaries in Vantage and click New Analysis on the left
2. On the Analysis Type page select ‘Ad hoc Analysis’
3. On the Summaries page click the Add Summary button
4. Enter the name Profiled Site Keywords, or anything else you prefer, then enter the Expression:
Profile([Site.Keyword]), and click OK
Tips:
1. Whenever you make changes to a report template, on completion of the changes, click Return To Reports on the left, then click the Save Templates link to make a copy of your changes, before running the report.
2. When you run the report, use a test storage, with only a very small amount of data in it. This will allow the report to complete quickly, and let you see whether the changes are what you expected. If they are, then you can run the report on your entire data.
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