What is the purpose of the Search Log found under the Knowledge menu?

[Karina Larson]

I cannot find any documentation on the use case for the Search Log list available in relation to Knowledge.  

Based on the available fields, I haven't figured much benefit to this list.   We're interested to know what search terms folks are using to discover resources but additionally need to know where they're searching from:   global search, knowledge search, knowledge base search, contextual from Incident?   It would be tremendously helpful to know which article the user selects, if any.

Based on the information that is available,

• What does it mean when the search term logged is homepage?  
• What is the number in results supposed to tell me?   When I spot check by doing a search from Knowledge Homepage, using the same search term listed, the number of results is not the same.
• Why do I often see the same search term listed by the same user within minutes?   Are they filtering their search and it's captured as a unique search?
• Which table does this data come from?

How are other companies using this data?   Have you implemented another solution to understand effectiveness of searching for Knowledge?

[Brad Tilton]

This is from the ts_query_kb table.

[naitik]

Hi Karina,

Answers to your direct questions:

• What does it mean when the search term logged is homepage?
  • The search term field is the actual text input provided by user when knowledge search was performed.
  • In your case the user would have searched 'homepage'
• What is the number in results supposed to tell me?   When I spot check by doing a search from Knowledge Homepage, using the same search term listed, the number of results is not the same.
  • This might depend on the end user roles, a particular user might not have access to all the articles, so that can be the reason for inconsistent results.
• Why do I often see the same search term listed by the same user within minutes?   Are they filtering their search and it's captured as a unique search?
  • If the user enters a term, clears it and adds it again, then we'll see couple of entries in the search log table. So, I would ask the end user what the use case was.
• Which table does this data come from?
  • This does not come from a particular table, contextual search performed anywhere would be logged. Example: Knowledge homepage, short description field on incident form, user defined contextual search configured on any field of a form

Thanks,

Naitik Doshi

[darius_koohmare]

"

How are other companies using this data?   Have you implemented another solution to understand effectiveness of searching for Knowledge?

"

This data is key to identifying knowledge management gaps. It's common to export the data and run it through a text clustering / text analysis algorithm/software that tells you what the major text clusters are.

E.g. "password reset" "connect to wireless", etc.

Then you can focus on making sure theres KB content around those topics.

It's useful to prioritize where there is no content for high demand searches first, and then to refine existing content around high demand searches.

[timeaholmes]

what kind of clustering/text analysis software are you using. I have been doing research on the proper tool, but have not found anything yet that best fits out needs.