Search Meter
Search Meter is a WordPress plugin that helps you keep your blog focused on what your visitors want to read. It does this by keeping track of what your visitors are searching for.
If you have a Search box on your blog, Search Meter automatically records what people are searching for — and whether they are finding what they are looking for. Search Meter’s admin interface shows you what people have been searching for in the last couple of days, and in the last week or month. It also shows you which searches have been unsuccessful. If people search your blog and get no results, they’ll probably go elsewhere. With Search Meter, you’ll be able to find out what people are searching for, and give them what they want by creating new posts on those topics.
You can also show your readers what the most popular searches are. The Popular Searches widget displays a configurable list of recent popular successful search terms on your blog, with each term hyperlinked to the actual search results. There’s also a Recent Searches widget, which simply displays the most recent searches. If you are happy to edit your theme, both of these functions are also available as template tags.
Search Meter installs easily and requires no configuration. Just install it, activate it, and it starts tracking your visitors’ searches. Here’s a screenshot of the administration interface, showing some of the reports you’ll get. Click the image for a full-size view.
Compatibility
Search Meter has been tested successfully with WordPress versions from 1.5 to 2.2.1, and should also work with newer versions as they are released.
Download and Install
- Download the search-meter.php file (see the end of this article for download location).
- Copy search-meter.php into your WordPress plugins directory (wp-content/plugins).
- Log in to WordPress Admin. Go to the Plugins page and click Activate for Search Meter.
View Statistics
To see your search statistics, Log in to WordPress Admin, go to the Dashboard page and click Search Meter. You’ll see the most popular searches in the last day, week and month. Click “Last 100 Searches” or “Last 500 Searches” to see lists of all recent searches.
Manage Statistics
There are a couple of management option available if you go to the Options page and click Search Meter. Use the Reset Statistics button to clear all past search statistics; Search Meter will immediately start gathering fresh statistics. If you’re technically-minded, you might want to check the “Keep detailed information” checkbox to make Search Meter save technical information about every search (the information is taken from the HTTP headers).
Popular and Recent Searches
The Popular Searches widget displays a list of the most popular successful search terms on your blog during the last 30 days. The Recent Searches widget displays a simple list of the most recent successful search terms. In both cases, the search terms in the lists are hyperlinked to the actual search results; readers can click the search term to show the results for that search. Also, you can configure the maximum number of searches that each widget will display.
To add these widgets to your sidebar, log in to WordPress Admin, go to the Presentation page and click Widgets. You can drag the appropriate widget to the sidebar of your choice, and click the Configure button to set the number of searches to display.
Widget support depends on the version of WordPress and the theme you’re using. In some cases you will not be able to use the widgets. In any case, you can always use the Search Meter template tags to display the same information. You’ll need to edit your theme to use them.
The sm_list_popular_searches() template tag displays a list of the 5 most popular successful search terms on your blog during the last 30 days. Each term is a hyperlink; readers can click the search term to show the results for that search. Here are some examples of using this template tag.
sm_list_popular_searches()
Show a simple list of the 5 most popular recent successful search terms, hyperlinked to the actual search results.
sm_list_popular_searches('<h2>Popular Searches</h2>')
Show the list as above, with the heading “Popular Searches”. If there have been no successful searches, then this tag displays no heading and no list.
sm_list_popular_searches('<li><h2>Popular Searches</h2>', '</li>')
Show the headed list as above; this form of the tag should be used in the default WordPress theme. Put it in the sidebar.php file.
sm_list_popular_searches('<li><h2>Popular Searches</h2>', '</li>', 10)
This is the same as the above, but it shows the 10 most popular searches.
sm_list_recent_searches()
Show a simple list of the 5 most recent successful search terms, hyperlinked to the actual search results. You can also use the same options as for the sm_list_popular_searches tag.
Problems, questions or requests?
If you find any problems, please let me know by leaving a comment at the bottom of this page. You can also leave a comment if you have any questions about how it works, or if you would like to request a feature.
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