Search Terms and Exit Pages - What and How (SWOOP for SharePoint)
The Search Terms report tells you which terms have been searched for and how often people clicked on the items on the search results page. The data is presented in two different formats as outlined below.
Word cloud
The word cloud shows all of the search terms that people have entered into the search bar in SharePoint. The frequency of the term is reflected by the font size, so a term in a big font has been searched for more frequently than a term in a smaller font.
The color of the term also reflects if the visitor searching continued to another page or exited the intranet at this point:
- Grey font: Out of all of the searches performed, less than 70% exited on a search results page
- Red font: Out of all of the searches performed, more than 70% exited on a search results page
Table view
The layout can be toggled so it is shown as in a table view. It has the following columns:
- Keyword: This is the search term
- Searches: How many times the term has been used
- Pages: The average (mean), number of search result pages that were viewed by all those searching for term. The higher the number, the more results page users viewed before finding a result to click on indicating the best result is not being surfaced on the first page.
- Failure Rate: Shows the percentage of searches that ended on a search results page. This indicates that users have stopped searching without clicking on a result and likely represents a failure to find what they needed.
How to use the report
On the word cloud, those large terms are the most popular search terms. If they are in red, it means that it is likely the search term was not successful at finding relevant content as many of those searching have gone on to exit the intranet at this point. Those terms should be investigated to see if there is either a relevant result in the first page, or if a suggested result should be pinned to the top of the search results.
On the table you can easily see the amount the most popular searches are undertaken and see what percentage of them exit at that point. If there is a high exit rate it is likely people are not finding a relevant search result.
Looking at the "page" column gives an indication if people are having to spend time going through many pages of results before deciding to either click on a link, or exit the intranet. Therefore a low exit rate and low page number indicate searches that are more likely successful.