Zendesk Explore features a prebuilt Search dashboard that helps you understand how your customers interact with your help center, including what they’re searching for and how successfully they find answers. It helps you identify hot topics that interest customers most, and also helps you detect gaps in your knowledge base that need to be addressed.
In the following topics, you'll learn how to access the search analytics dashboard and see the available reports:
The information in Explore dashboards is updated on a schedule. The schedule depends on which Explore plan you are using. For details, see Data refresh intervals for Explore reporting.
Accessing the Search dashboard
Use the following procedure to access the Search dashboard.
To access the Search dashboard
- In the Zendesk product tray, click the Explore icon (
).
- From the list of dashboards, select the Zendesk Guide dashboard.
- Click the Search tab.
Understanding the Search dashboard reports
The Search dashboard shows information about searches, click-through rate, tickets created, and more. You can filter the reports on the dashboard by Time, Brand, Search channel, User role, and Locale.
Using the dashboard, you can slice and filter the search metrics to get a detailed picture of your help center’s performance, including:
- The most common queries your customers search for: Track search queries by brands, user types, and locales.
- Where users perform their searches: Track whether searches are performed directly in the help center or via the Mobile SDK or Web Widget.
- Where you can improve your self-service performance: Track the number of results and click-through rate by searches to identify whether customers find what they’re looking for.
- How search volume affects ticket creation: Track the number of searches and the number of tickets created and detect possible correlations.
Search dashboard headline metrics
This tab displays the following headline metrics (KPIs) for the time range you specify:
- Total searches: The total number of searches that users performed in your knowledge base.
- Searches with no results: The total number of searches that users performed that returned no results.
- Avg click-through rate: The number of results clicked on divided by the number of searches performed.
- Tickets created: The total number of tickets created in the help center.
Search dashboard reports
This tab displays the following reports for the time range and data filters you specify:
-
Searches by results and clicks (last 7 days): Displays a pie chart with the total number of searches performed, broken down by searches with clicks, searches with no results, and searches with no clicks.
-
Searches by user role: Displays a pie chart with the total number of searches, broken down by the role of the user who performed the search.
-
Searches with no results (top 5): Displays a bar chart with the top 5 most searched-for strings that returned no results.
-
Search effectiveness: Displays a column chart with the total searches performed, broken down to searches with results and searches without results. On top of the bars, the line chart shows the average click-through rate over time.
-
Ticket to search ratio: Displays a column chart with the number of tickets created after search. The line chart shows the tickets created per search ratio over time.
-
Search queries overview (last 30 days): Displays a table with the strings that users searched for, including how many times a string was searched for, the average number of results it returned, the average click-through rate, and the number of tickets created after searching for that string.
-
Search queries and top clicked articles: Displays a table with the
articles that were clicked on most often, including the string that users
searched for to find the article, and the number of times the article was
clicked.
32 comments
Orsolya Forster
Hi Trevor Piercey,
The roll-out of the Search dashboard will finish on November 19, so it's possible that your account isn't updated yet.
Since, we're also consolidating all the Guide dashboards, it can be that your Search dashboard is temporarily included in the Zendesk Guide: Knowledge Base and Search dashboard. This consolidation work will also be complete by November 19.
By the end of this week, everything should work as described in the article.
Thanks for the feedback. Cheers!
1
Oleksandra Marchenko
Hey y'all!
Does the "Total Searches" number include the auto-searches performed when a user is creating a ticket and they are being suggested KB articles automatically, based on their issue description?
Thank you
1
Orsolya Forster
Hi Oleksandra Marchenko,
This dataset doesn't include the auto searches. Extending the dataset is certainly on our radar, however it's not our short term roadmap yet. I'll mark your comment for future planning.
Thanks for your contribution.
Cheers!
1
Jodi Pulizzi
Is there a way to view all searched terms with no results as opposed to just the top 5?
0
Orsolya Forster
Hi Jodi Pulizzi,
Yes, you can get this information in the Search queries overview table by sorting the Average number of results column. Just click on the little arrow on the top of the column. Note that search data in this table is limited to the last 30 days on the default dashboard, due to data volume considerations. This means that you'll get the searches with no results in the last 30 days.
In case you can create custom queries, you can build your own table to get all the searches with no results.
Cheers!
0
Kathryn Lacomba
Hello,
This is a great tool! However, how do I know if my click through rate and result rates are good. I have tried searching here and Googling CTR for documentation/help centers but no luck. You show 58% above, is that a good rate? How do I know if I have too many search results?
Thank you!
0
Orsolya Forster
Hi Kathryn Lacomba,
The click-through rate describes search conversion to clicks, therefore you want to see it trending upwards. It's hard to set the general healthy threshold, I advise you to follow trends over time to define what's the best KPI for your help center.
Cheers!
0
Jodi Pulizzi
Hi,
0
Orsolya Forster
Hi Jodi Pulizzi,
The table below is limited to show the last 30 days' data only. This was necessary to prevent performance issues of the query.
If your global time filter is set longer than 30 days, that might give more results in your bar chart compared to the table.
To see all the search terms with no results, you need to create a custom query, it's not available in the default dashboard.
Cheers!
0
Rachelle Smeets
There is one thing that I don't understand in the search effectiveness dashboard. I see that the clickthrough ratio has an upward trend, despite the fact that there percentage wise more searches with no results. Is there no correlation between these two KPI's?
0
Orsolya Forster
Hi Rachelle Smeets,
Click-through is the number of clicks relative to the searches, it is not explicitly related to the searches with no results. If you are interested in the metrics and definitions, you can learn more in this article.
Cheers!
0
Carrie Boogaart
Question about the Tickets Created query. Is there any way to see a list of the places/sources that ZD is counting these tickets created from? Like, is it tickets created from the widget, submit a request button/link, and?? Is there any other place that this could be counting from?
0
Elaine
Hi Carrie,
Yes! This information is available in Explore and it is referred to as Ticket channels. More information about this is in the article Understanding ticket channels in Explore.
Hope this helps!
0
Valgerður Kristinsdóttir
Hi. Does this also track searches performed through the search API?
0
Orsolya Forster
Valgerður Kristinsdóttir,
No, API searches are not included in this report. It is an addition we are planning to add to the roadmap soon.
Cheers!
0
Shannon Ropell
Is there a way to correlate search queries with the user? We just launched our Help Center and I see some users are running searches incorrectly (our Help Center supports our digital asset management platform and the user is searching for actual files rather than articles on how to find those files in our digital asset mgmt platform). I'd like to reach out to the user and provide more support and help them understand the difference between the two platforms.
0
Beth_Borghi
Is there a way to view the actual tickets that were created when a user searched for a term and then created a ticket (as shown in the Explore "Search Queries Overview" for the columns "Search Query" and "Tickets Created")? It would be helpful for me to view those specific tickets to see why our Help Center article wasn't sufficient. Thank you in advance!
0
Judy Correia
Hi - do the search counts include searches by agents via the Knowledge Capture App?
Thx
0
Orsolya Forster
Shannon Ropell, user identifiers are not available in the search dataset. We will be looking into a potential addition soon, but not yet on the roadmap.
Beth_Borghi similar to the above, this data isn't yet available but we're looking into this addition as well.
Judy Correia KC app searches aren't included in the dataset.
Cheers!
1
Bailey McWhorter
Is the click through rate for articles suggested by the chat bot is included in the help desk article search click through rate? Or is the search click through rate based only on the help center numbers and answer bot/chat bot does not influence or affect the data?
0
Judy Correia
How are searches with no results defined? When I search terms noted in 'Searches with no results (top 5)' results actually appear. And I have found terms noted in 'Searches with no results (top 5)' are listed in 'Search queries and top clicked articles' and show an article has been clicked at least for the search time. How is it possible for a search term be noted as 'no result' and have a 'top clicked article' noted?
0
Orsolya Forster
Bailey McWhorter the click-through rate only counts in the enabled channels; i.e. help center, agent workspace etc. Answer bot is not included.
Judy Correia Searches with no results should indeed show search terms where search returned 0 results. Time filter can be important in this case, because there might be a search term which doesn't yield any results while a certain match is in draft (= not returned by search), or the matching brand (= search source) isn't available. Once the matching content is published and enabled in search, there will be results returned. There can be many reasons for such edge cases.
Cheers!
0
Ilia Pakhomov
Hi!
Is it possible to get the data used for this dashboard through the Zendesk API?
I wasn't able to find the information about getting the end-user searches info in HelpCenter API documentation:
https://developer.zendesk.com/api-reference/help_center/help-center-api/introduction/
0
Romona
Unfortunately its is not currently accessible as is via the API. The rate source of the data may be but the calculations and metrics on the Help Center search results will not be accessible via the API.
Cheers!
0
Monica Gilbert
How do I know if my ticket to search ratio result rates are good?
0
JR Lausin
You can use the Tickets created / search ratio to understand submissions from your help center more generally.
A high ticket to search ratio indicates that your customers are not performing as many searches prior to submitting their tickets. A low ticket to search ratio indicates that your customers are searching and not submitting as many tickets afterward.
SIncerely,
0
Annelies Van der Sanden
Hi Orsolya Forster, Any news if the request of Beth_Borghi has been added?
0
Laura P.
What does it mean when the average clickthrough rate is over 100%? We have pages with 150% and even 450%. I understand the formula is “number of results clicked on divided by the number of searches performed”. Does it mean that users are opening more than one result from that same search result page?
0
Dainne Kiara Lucena-Laxamana
Hi Laura P. !
As stated by Alex here in this Community Post:
0
Kelly Sofia
If someone performs a search, then uses the sidebar to filter the results, and then clicks a result, will that count as one search performed or two? i.e. would the click through rate be 100% or 50%?
0