Every day, visitors type into the search box on your website exactly what they want, in their own words. “Dog friendly.” “Pram.” “Wineries open Monday.” “Lavender farm.”

A search log is the closest thing a destination website has to the questions asked at a visitor information centre counter (What a visitor information centre knows). It costs nothing to collect and shows where the site is failing people. Half an hour a month is enough to use it.

Where to find it

In Google Analytics 4. When enhanced measurement is on, GA4 records a view_search_results event each time a visitor sees a search results page, provided the results page puts the search in the address as a query parameter. By default it looks for q, s, search, query or keyword, and you can add others. The words people typed then appear as the “Search term” dimension in the Events report (Google Analytics Help⁠ (opens in a new tab)).

If your results pages don’t use a query parameter, or the search runs inside the page without changing the address, GA4 won’t see it. Search for something on your own site, look at the address bar, and ask whoever built the site how searches are recorded.

In your search provider’s analytics. If the site’s search runs on a dedicated service, that service usually has its own reports. Algolia, for example, reports a “no results rate”, “the percentage of searches with no results”, and a click-through rate for searches (Algolia⁠ (opens in a new tab)).

One caution: GA4 withholds some rows when user counts are low (Google Analytics Help⁠ (opens in a new tab)), so a small site may see fewer search terms than were typed. Read the log as a list of clues, not a census.

Read two lists

The top searches. The 30 most common terms for the month. They tell you what visitors want most, and whether it is easy to find. If “markets” is a top-five search every month, markets probably deserve a link in the main navigation and a page of their own.

The searches that failed. The terms with no results, or with results nobody clicked. These are the useful ones. Each failed search has one of four causes, and each cause has a fix.

Four reasons a search fails, and what to do

The examples below are illustrative, not from a particular site.

1. You have it, under another name. A visitor types “pram” and your accessibility information says “stroller-friendly”. They type “cellar door” and your products are filed as “wineries”. Add the visitor’s word to the page’s text, in a sentence, where it is true: “The walk is sealed and suitable for prams.” A page that uses the visitor’s word is easier for them to find.

2. You have it, but it isn’t on the site. A visitor searches for a festival your team knows well, and there is no event page because the organiser never created an ATDW profile. Ask the organiser to create one, or add it to the site yourself as a custom event (Custom products, ATDW products and product tiers).

3. The region has it, but no operator page says so. “Dog friendly accommodation” returns nothing, although several properties take dogs. The information isn’t in their products. This is operator data: ask those operators to add it to their ATDW profiles, in the description and the relevant fields, and it will reach every site that uses ATDW, not only yours.

4. The region doesn’t have it. “Snorkelling” in an inland region, or the name of an attraction two regions away. These searches still tell you something. A recurring search for a neighbouring attraction may be worth a “getting there from here” mention, or a conversation with the neighbouring RTO.

A monthly routine

  1. Export the month’s search terms from GA4 or your search provider.
  2. Group the obvious variants (“dog friendly”, “dogs”, “pet friendly”).
  3. Mark each failed search with one of the four causes above.
  4. Fix the first two causes yourself that week: wording and missing pages.
  5. Send cause 3 to the operators concerned, with the search counts. An operator who learns that 40 people searched for dog-friendly stays in a month has a reason to update their profile.
  6. Keep a running list. A term that fails three months in a row is a content gap worth a page.

Spikes are worth a look too. A sudden rise in searches for a road, a park or “closures” usually means something has happened that the site doesn’t yet say. Check it the same day.

What to tell the board

The search log makes good material for the commentary lines under a quarterly board report: the five most common searches, how many failed, and what the team changed as a result.

On Roam

Search on Roam sites runs on Algolia and is typo-tolerant, so “Castelmaine” still finds Castlemaine, and ATDW products and custom products appear in the same results. If you’re not sure where your site’s search terms are recorded, ask Roam support. The reading, and the conversation with operators, is the team’s work.