Viewing search data
To open the search analytics dashboard
- In
Support,
click
the Reporting icon (
) in the sidebar, then click the Search tab.
Note: If you don't see results on the Search tab, refresh your browser. - To filter the data based on the channel where the search
was initiated, click All channels, then
select Help Center, Mobile SDK, or
Web Widget.
- Click any of the four options for viewing search
data:
- Total, all performed searches.
- With no result, searches that returned 0 results.
- With no clicks, searches where no result was selected.
- Tickets created, searches that led to a ticket being created.
- Hover
your mouse over a node
on
the graph to see the total number
for
a
specific day.
- Below the detailed graph you can
view
search data in a table.
The Total data set includes data for the top 500 searches overall. Each of the other data sets filters the top 500 search terms accordingly to show data for searches that had no results, no clicks, or resulted in tickets.
Field | Description |
---|---|
Search string | Exact term the end-user entered in the search |
Total searches | Total number of end-user searches for a term over the last 30 days |
Avg number of results | Average number of search results displayed for a search term |
Click-through rate | Percentage of end-users who clicked one of the search results displayed for a search term. |
Tickets created | Total number of tickets created by end-users clicking Submit a request in your help center immediately after a search |
Top clicked result | Knowledge base content that was the most selected from search results |
If you want to export your results, you can click the CSV button on the upper-right corner of the graph. By default, the file displays the top 1000 search strings across all channels.
Following up on search data
Search analytics gives you insight into what your customers are looking for and where they are failing to find answers.
To make end-users more successful you can analyze search data (review searches with no clicks or no results, look at click-through, notice whether the best content appears in results, and so on), then take actions to improve search results and your knowledge base content.
After you make changes, it will take about three minutes before the content is indexed and can be searched.
Improve search results
- Add labels to content. You can add tags to content so that the appropriate content appears in search results. For example, if you see that end-users are searching for "e-mail" but you use "email" without a dash in your content, add a label with the similar term to the content.
- Update content titles. You can rewrite titles to more closely match end-user searches. For example, if your article is titled "Deleting an email account" and end-users are searching for "removing a user from email," consider updating the title.
- Break content into smaller articles. You can divide large articles into smaller articles to help customers find what they are looking for. For example, instead of "Managing email" consider smaller articles about "Setting up email," "Adding email accounts," and "Deleting email accounts."
- Update content body text. You can add common end-user search terms to the body of appropriate articles so that the article appears higher in search results.
- Remove old content. You can remove old content so that it does not clutter search results and confuse your customers.
Improve your knowledge base content
- Update existing content. You can update existing content to be more complete. For example, if end-users are searching for how to schedule a backup, and you have an article on running manual backups but not how to schedule backups, consider adding that information to the article. If scheduling backups is not an option, you might want to add that info to the article so that end-users don't continue looking for an answer.
- Add new content. You can add content for common searches that aren't yielding any search results. For example, if end-users are searching for "accessing email remotely" and no content exists on that article, consider adding that article to your knowledge base.
86 Comments
Hi Mariano!
Search string information isn't sent over to Insights, so I'm afraid it's not possible to build such a report there. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
I'm looking at our Search analytics, specifically the "Tickets Created" section. Is there a way to find the specific ticket(s) created with a search string so that I can get more context?
Hi Emily!
If you click on the Tickets Created tab in your analytics it will show you a list of search strings and the number of tickets created from each one. However, it's not possible to view the actual tickets themselves. It might be possible to pull this information out via API, though.
Hello
Welcome to the Community, Alessio! Sorry for the delayed reponse.
The native reporting in Zendesk isn't built to drill down to specific tickets created. It's meant to be a high level overview of the activity in your Zendesk and Help Center.
Hi Jessie
Thank you for your reply.
That's a pity. I think that would be the best option for checking what content is missing in the content. E.g. when a customer searches for something and there is a result but the customer choses to create a ticket, that means that maybe something is missing in the text.
May I ask why this is not possible? It seems that the data is somewhere in the background if the reporting is able to tell me the exact number of tickets created :) For the moment we have to guess why and what a customer has written.
Best regards
Alessio
Hey Alessio!
You're able to do more detailed reporting in our Professional/Enterprise level reporting tool, Insights. You can find more information about that here.
Hi Jessie
Thanks again for your reply. We already know the Insights, but we did not find any possibility for Help Center stuff. Do you have a hint? What metrics do we have to chose to get data for the HC?
One of the admins in my account isn't able to download the CSV of search terms with no results. She is an administrator, while I am the account owner.
Do I need to change her permissions to allow her access to download that CSV?
Hi Alessio!
At this time Help Center data isn't sent into Insights. You can use Google Analytics to get a lot of really great data, though.
Hello Katherine,
If they are an administrator they should see this option. I'm going to create a ticket for you so we can troubleshoot this one on one. You should hear from me soon.
Hi Jessie
Confusing, on June 12th you spoke about Insights:
"You're able to do more detailed reporting in our Professional/Enterprise level reporting tool, Insights. You can find more information about that here."
But well, we'll try with Google Analytics.
Hi,
in my search dashbord, I see that Without Results has some occurences, but no records about string names are shown below.
I've read that it's a known issue. Hasn't it been fixed yet?
Thanks,
Serena
Hi Carlo,
I believe we are still investigating this. I'm going to follow up with you in a ticket to get some more detail.
Stay tuned!
Hi,
Is there a possibility to export all the results and not just a 1000?
Thanks
Catherine
Hi there! I've generated a Search Stats report for the past 90 days, which is great, but I'm being denied access to downloading a CSV of this report. I'm an Admin, so I'm not sure why this is happening. The owner of our account also tried downloading a CSV of this report, but it's only showing data in the CSV for today. Any way to fix this?
Hi Catherine,
Thanks for writing! As of the moment it is only available up to top 1000 search strings. Sorry about that.
Thanks!
Hi Stephanie,
Thanks for letting us know. I'm going to create a ticket on this for you and we can troubleshoot this one together from there. I'll see you in the ticket. :)
Best,
Amie
Hello,
I am an administrator but I can not see the CSV option to export the results. Can you help me please?
Hi Jaime!
The export options aren't enabled by default; we enabled it on our end by request. I'll create a ticket for you so we can get that process started for you. You'll be seeing an email from us shortly!
I also would like the ability to get the list of tickets created based on a specific term.
We use labels for the suggested articles feature in the webwidget, this would be a great indication if we need to improve the articles, the subjects, or create new ones.
The account owner and I (adm) do not see the CSV download option from the Search tab. Can you help us, please?
Hi Jaime,
Sorry to hear that option isn't showing up for you! I'd like to take a look at some information in your account to see why that may be —You'll see an email from me shortly so that we can look at this in greater detail. Thanks!
We cannot see any search strings in our reporting dashboard except some single random line... We have verified that people are searching within guide. We require people to be logged in to access the guide because we are using Zendesk as internal support at this point. Any help on this issue?
Hiya Ron!
I spun up a ticket for this issue so we could get a little more detailed in our back and forth. Keep an eye on your inbox!
Is there a way to see which tickets were created after a search? I wish that number was a hyperlink to see what search led to which tickets. It would help so that I can figure out why the article didn't provide the needed information.
Hi Kimberly,
There isn't a way to see this information natively, however, we do have a Pathfinder App available to customers on the Enterprise plan or have purchased the Productivity Pack add-on.
The Pathfinder app will allow you to see which web pages, Help Center articles and community posts customers have viewed and searched for (including within the Web Widget) prior to submitting support requests.
Hope this helps!
Hello Brett,
This means searching each ticket to check in the Path finder what search exactly did the user type before typing the request to us.
Is there a way with the API or the Insight stats to do this kind of search? (selecting only tickets created by people who did a search on guide just before)
Hi Samuel,
I reached out to our Support team here and unfortunately that's not possible through the API or Insights. You'd most likely need to use Google Analytics to accomplish what you're looking for.
Cheers!
Ok thanks, I was afraid of that.
Out of curiosity, how does then the stats dashboard knows that a specific query did generate a ticket?
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