Analyzing help center search results without Explore

Note: If you have Zendesk Explore, see Analyzing help center search results with Explore for information on the pre-built Search dashboard.

Using the search analytics dashboard you can review help center search terms. For each search term you can see the number of searches for that term, number and type of search results returned (if any), click-through, and the next action taken.

To view search data, you must enable your help center first. See Getting started with Guide.

This article contains the following topics:

• Viewing search data
• Following up on search data

Viewing search data

Search data includes end user and agent searches in your help center, as well as searches in the mobile SDK and Web Widget, if you have set up those channels.

Instant search and autocomplete searches are not counted.

To open the search analytics dashboard

1. In Support, click the Reporting icon () in the sidebar, then click the Search tab. If you don't see results on the Search tab, refresh your browser.
2. 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.

   

3. 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.
   Above each data set you can see the number of searches in the last 30 days for that data set.
4. Hover your mouse over a node on the graph to see the total number for a specific day.

   

5. 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.

   

Table 1. End user search data

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.

The CSV export option is available only to admins and account owners.

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

You can improve end user search results by updating content in the following ways:

• 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

You can improve your knowledge base content by identifying content gaps and updating 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.