Collect/analyze search terms from portal searches

[geoffluk]

Hi all,

We've recently deployed the Service Portal to replace our previous CMS portal, and we've made a push for people to begin using the search widget. We are finding that people seem to be using the typeahead search widget to either find a record producer or a knowledge base item, but we'd like more insight about this use.

We've tried scouring for places where the search terms might be recorded, but we've only been able to find tables that store research terms/results of the global search in the main UI. For example, there are ts_search_summary.list, text_search.list, ts_query_kb.list, and so on. These are specific to the other tables and knowledge bases at large, and not specific to search terms typed in by our users into our typeahead search widget.

Has anyone found a way to run a report or pull up a list of just the search terms users have typed into their portal search? It's OK if it also includes search results, but what we're really interested in is seeing people's search trends over time, and how we can adapt our portal to these trends.

Thanks!

[Rushit Patel2]

it is captured into table "sp_log"

widget's server script has this line $sp.logStat() function which enters record into sp_log table.

out of box it captures page view, knowledge article view   etc..

(please mark helpful/like/correct if it helps)

[geoffluk]

Hi Rushit,

Thanks very much for your response. We are familiar with the Log Entries (sp_log) table, however, it doesn't quite contain what we're looking for.

We would like to see the search terms people are entering into our typeahead search. For example, on the homepage of the portal we have a very large search box. We know that people are using this to search existing records (incidents, enhancements), knowledge articles, and record producers/catalog items. However, we don't know   what people are typing into this search box to find said items.

If somebody were to try typing in a natural language inquiry such as "I need help setting up my VPN", they get no results:

Whereas if they searched just "VPN" they'll receive the first 10 records from whatever tables return results:

What we would like to see somewhere is those search terms "vpn", and how ever the string "i need help setting up my vpn" is recorded (whether as individual search words, keywords, or a whole string).

Currently the only text entered by our users is what the "Text" column in the sp_log shows, which is basically the text they are entering into the Comments field of the Ticket Conversations widget. (Otherwise it's the title of the Knowledge article, Record Producer, or Catalog Item they open).

Thanks!

[jbor]

Hi Geoffluk,

Did you ever find a solution to this problem?

[Kim Tillano]

I built a report based on the Knowledge Searches table (ts_query_kb) and it returns specific search terms and phrases.  There is a lot of incremental redundancy, but it is what they searched for in the knowledge base.  If you expand the search term sections, it shows who searched using those terms and what date the search was created.  Is that what you are looking for?

There is also a home page that shows "Top Searches".  I converted it to a dashboard containing all the different search results.  Here is an example - showing the Knowledge results widget (there are several others, as well - incident search results, problem, change request, etc - they are all able to be filtered by clicking the buttons to show top 10 searches for the hour, day, week or month):