Analysing Local Search

Optimising Site Content by Analysing Local Search

Most websites offer a local search option where visitors can enter keywords in order to locate content pages that relate to what they are looking for on the website. This offers a valuable insight into what your customers are searching for and can act as a useful analysis when looking to optimise your website content.

Business Goal

To increase conversions and customer satisfaction by first better understanding what visitors are looking for on the website that may be unavailable or difficult to find, and then acting on insight to correct the problems.

Example:

  • When visitors cannot find what they are looking for on your website using primary navigation mechanisms they may resort to the local search capabilities that you offer for help (This may then identify any areas that are lacking on your site, based on what your customers search for).

Most Common Challenges

  • It is difficult to interpret visitors' intent from analysing their clickstreams alone. Analysing local search is unique in that visitors are expressing their intent explicitly using their own words.

  • Some local search functions do not provide the necessary data to perform analysis as they are wither outsourced or do not leave a footprint of the search results inside the log files (neither through query strings nor page tags).
  • Custom and ad hoc reporting capabilities are required to investigate the resulting actions of visitors following searches. Out-of-box reports provide very little information value.

How SCL Analytics can help

Unica NetTracker (lower traffic volumes) and Affinium NetInsight (higher traffic volumes) offer a powerful web analytics solution, enabling you to gather and investigate the information required to analyse local search and ultimately optimise your website content.

For more information download our FREE Recipe Card (PDF File) "optimise site content by analysing local search" or Contact us to find out more about our web analytics solutions and how they can help you optimise your online marketing campaigns.

Related Affinium NetInsight Diagram

An Affinium NetInsight graph showing trends for 3 local search keywords.