# Search usability and data
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-usability-and-data/33149
**Category:** Feature
**Tags:** search
**Created:** [September 11, 2015, 11:22pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-usability-and-data/33149 "2015-09-11T23:22:29Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@charleswalter](https://meta.discourse.org/u/charleswalter)
#### Post date: [September 11, 2015, 11:22pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-usability-and-data/33149/1 "2015-09-11T23:22:29Z")
Is there a way to get any info on how users are using search? What they are searching for?
We have a lot of categories, so I thought the search would be used almost as a way of global navigation.
I think the ability to search in topic by default should be a community option. Most users may prefer using it as a way to jump around the larger community.
But it’s hard to make the right suggestions without the data.
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [September 11, 2015, 11:27pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-usability-and-data/33149/2 "2015-09-11T23:27:12Z")
> [@charleswalter](#):
>
> Is there a way to get any info on how users are using search? What they are searching for?
not quite yet, but I definitely want to add a search log, it later can be used for auto suggest and improving search quality
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### Author:  [@charleswalter](https://meta.discourse.org/u/charleswalter)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2015, 2:38am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-usability-and-data/33149/3 "2015-09-12T02:38:56Z")
@sam have you ever considered using Google Analytics events?
I realized I am able to see a number of URLs with query parameter in google analytics. I guess this is triggered either on mobile or when users hit enter. Of the 1000 searches being shown, the large majority seem to be searches for category names. And often when restricted to the topic level (context=topic), the queries are returning 0 results.
If I’m not mistaken, on mobile it is default to search within the topic, but on desktop, the option was default unchecked. Not sure if this inconsistency was intentional.
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### Author:  [@Mittineague](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Mittineague)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2015, 6:42am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-usability-and-data/33149/4 "2015-09-12T06:42:48Z")
> [@charleswalter](#):
>
> returning 0 results.
Got an example of search phrases that would demonstrate this?
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### Author:  [@charleswalter](https://meta.discourse.org/u/charleswalter)
#### Post date: [September 13, 2015, 4:05am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-usability-and-data/33149/5 "2015-09-13T04:05:04Z")
Sure. Here were some sample URLs that I can see in Google Analytics.
[http://www.helloforos.com/search?context=topic&context\_id=14962&q=Thalia](http://www.helloforos.com/search?context=topic&context_id=14962&q=Thalia)
[http://www.helloforos.com/search?context=topic&context\_id=559&q=Venezuela](http://www.helloforos.com/search?context=topic&context_id=559&q=Venezuela)
[http://www.helloforos.com/search?context=topic&context\_id=12187&q=justin%20bieber](http://www.helloforos.com/search?context=topic&context_id=12187&q=justin%20bieber)
or searching for a user:
[http://www.helloforos.com/search?context=topic&context\_id=9641&q=Felina24](http://www.helloforos.com/search?context=topic&context_id=9641&q=Felina24)
It’s possible that a user will uncheck the checkbox, but just thought it was strange that it was defaulted to search just the topic on mobile.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [September 13, 2015, 4:34am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-usability-and-data/33149/6 "2015-09-13T04:34:40Z")
Pretty sure being defaulted to in topic search on mobile is a bug @sam
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [September 13, 2015, 6:18am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-usability-and-data/33149/7 "2015-09-13T06:18:22Z")
Yeah will change that, also need to figure out a way to search for users on mobile
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### Author:  [@charleswalter](https://meta.discourse.org/u/charleswalter)
#### Post date: [September 21, 2015, 11:31pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-usability-and-data/33149/8 "2015-09-21T23:31:51Z")
And please also consider category names. would be nice if there’s a match on a category title that these could show up at the top of mobile search results. In communities with larger numbers of categories i can see this being very useful.
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [September 21, 2015, 11:42pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-usability-and-data/33149/9 "2015-09-21T23:42:33Z")
I really need some UI mockups for this, its tricky to interleave categories and users into the full page UI.
@awesomerobot maybe you have some ideas how [Search results for '' - Discourse Meta](https://meta.discourse.org/search) can handle category and user matches?
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [September 22, 2015, 12:15am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-usability-and-data/33149/10 "2015-09-22T00:15:21Z")
In the case of _direct_, _exact character-for-character_ matches I think it is clear what to do @sam. For example if I search for “tgxworld”.. that’s an exact match.
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [September 22, 2015, 12:19am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-usability-and-data/33149/11 "2015-09-22T00:19:27Z")
I am more thinking of a general solution here, on desktop we could add a side bar
But still need to think about a UI for mobile. Especially for partial matches.
We could mix the stream up, but it can get a bit confusing, maybe add modes to search or something
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### Author:  [@erlend\_sh](https://meta.discourse.org/u/erlend_sh)
#### Post date: [September 22, 2015, 11:05am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-usability-and-data/33149/12 "2015-09-22T11:05:58Z")
I like GitHub’s solution here. Simple sidebar that easily downgrades to a drop-down or tabs in mobile view:
I find it odd that they didn’t include the match count - “7 repositories”, “164 issues” etc - in the mobile interface, since that’s a very important clue.
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### Author:  [@charleswalter](https://meta.discourse.org/u/charleswalter)
#### Post date: [September 22, 2015, 2:43pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-usability-and-data/33149/13 "2015-09-22T14:43:16Z")
@erlend_sh I think GitHub is showing more a drilldown, as opposed to direct access to a category.
I was thinking more the way that Twitter will show an account. Whether it’s at the top or in a column. I think categories and posts can be on the same list, as long as we had a slight different way of labeling / displaying the category. Will try to give it more thought on my end.
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### Author:  [@awesomerobot](https://meta.discourse.org/u/awesomerobot)
#### Post date: [September 23, 2015, 12:55am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-usability-and-data/33149/14 "2015-09-23T00:55:12Z")
Yeah I think that this is probably the way to go on mobile — we don’t want to make assumptions of what the priority in the search is… and stacking any sort of results would imply priority by pushing down other groups of results… while tabs are typically seen as on the same level.
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### Author:  [@Jenn\_Briden](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jenn_Briden)
#### Post date: [November 11, 2015, 12:01am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-usability-and-data/33149/15 "2015-11-11T00:01:01Z")
Are there any plans to add analytics for search? We have an internal training department, and they’re curious to see what users are searching on in order to help develop curriculum.
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### Author:  [@charleswalter](https://meta.discourse.org/u/charleswalter)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2015, 12:13am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-usability-and-data/33149/16 "2015-11-23T00:13:39Z")
@Jenn_Briden Have you tried looking to see the data in Google Analytics?
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### Author:  [@RyanK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/RyanK)
#### Post date: [July 11, 2017, 10:04pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-usability-and-data/33149/17 "2017-07-11T22:04:19Z")
I don’t see any other threads on this, but it’s also pretty old. Are there any solutions built-in to discourse to review search behaviors?
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### Author:  [@Martin\_Cash](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Martin_Cash)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2017, 6:20pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-usability-and-data/33149/18 "2017-07-28T18:20:37Z")
@sam , just curious if you ever added a log for searches…if so, maybe I can get something from [Data Explorer](https://meta.discourse.org/t/32566?silent=true). Also, is there an update on if search analytics is on a roadmap? Right now, I don’t know if anyone uses the search feature and deflection is a big part of how I like to measure ROI with self-service platforms. Things like:
- What % of users/visitors use search
- What % clicked on a suggested result
- Top 20 queries
- What % of searches were refined
- Top 20 refined search terms
- What % used Advanced Search
- Etc…
Thanks!
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2017, 8:26pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-usability-and-data/33149/19 "2017-07-28T20:26:37Z")
We actually did complete the work of logging the information. You can try out:
```plaintext
SELECT term, count(*) searches,
sum(case when clicked_topic_id is not null then 1 else 0 end)
"continued from search"
from search_logs
where created_at > current_timestamp - interval '30' day
group by term
order by count(*) desc
limit 100
```
It [Data Explorer](https://meta.discourse.org/t/32566?silent=true), it will show you top 100 searches and even counts of who actually clicked through from search. I find the results super interesting.
We will work on exposing some more of this via the dashboard direct.
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [March 8, 2018, 5:03am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-usability-and-data/33149/20 "2018-03-08T05:03:09Z")
> [@charleswalter](#):
>
> Is there a way to get any info on how users are using search? What they are searching for?
Thanks to @techAPJ we now have a UI for this:
Head to Logs =\> Search Logs in the admin UI.
(in other news our click through on `theme` is way up due to recent search tweaks … we were sitting at 1/6 click throughs and now are more around 1/3, so yay 🥇)
[Next page](https://meta.discourse.org/t/search-usability-and-data/33149.md?page=2)