What your visitors went looking for
The search box on your site, and the surprisingly useful list of what came back empty.
Overview
Every template comes with a search box, and it searches everything — pages, products, blog posts, locations, services — from one field. There's nothing to install and nothing to configure.
The part worth your attention isn't the search itself. It's the record of what people typed, and particularly what they typed and found nothing.
You'll find it under Presence in the side navigation, called Search. The searches that found nothing show on Insights, under System, too.
It's already working
Search is on by default on every template, and it indexes your content as you publish it. A product added this morning is findable this morning; a page you unpublish stops appearing.
Matching is deliberately forgiving. People type in a hurry, in the singular when you wrote the plural, with a letter missing — and they should still find the thing.
To stop offering search, turn off Show site search in your site's Settings, under General. Most sites should leave it on: a visitor who can't find something usually leaves rather than browsing.
Reading the numbers
The Search page opens on a summary of a recent stretch of time, which you can widen or narrow to the last week, month, or quarter. Four numbers set the scene:
- Searches — how often the box was used at all.
- Unique queries — how many different things people looked for.
- No-result searches — how many returned nothing.
- No-result rate — that count as a share of every search made.
Your own testing counts too. If you've been trying the search box while signed in, ignore the spike you just made.
Why empty results matter most
A search that returns nothing is a visitor telling you exactly what they wanted, in their own words, at the moment you failed to provide it. There is no other feedback on your site that direct.
Each one is one of three things: something to stock, a page that's missing, or the word your customers use for something you call by another name. All three are small jobs with an obvious payoff, and the last is a single click.
A high empty rate is usually a naming problem rather than a stock problem — people looking for what you sell, using words you don't. If they search “sofa” and your product is called “three-seater”, both of you are right and only one of you made a sale.
What to do with the list
Each empty search comes with its fixes right beside it. Work down the list and give each one a home:
- You sell it, but under another name — click Show results for… and choose what it should find. Their word now brings up your products, and nothing gets renamed. Every rule you add is listed under Synonyms, where you can change it later.
- You don't sell it — decide whether enough people are asking to make it worth stocking. On the Store plan, Add product starts a hidden product named after the search, ready for you to fill in.
- It isn't a product at all — searches for “returns”, “delivery”, or “parking” mean a page is missing, not a product.
- It's a typo of something you do sell — usually nothing to do, since matching is already forgiving.
Popular terms are worth reading as navigation feedback. Anything searched constantly probably deserves a place in your menu, where nobody has to search for it.
Frequently asked questions
No. It's on by default on every template and indexes your content as you publish, so a product added today is findable today.
Everything on your site — pages, products, posts, locations, services — from one field, rather than a separate search per section.
Yes: turn off Show site search in your site's Settings, under General. Worth thinking twice about: a visitor who can't find something usually leaves rather than browsing for it.
Yes — searches made while you're signed in aren't separated out. If the numbers jumped after an afternoon of testing, that's why.
You can look at the last week, month, or quarter. It starts from when your site went live, so a new site has little to show for a while.
Usually vocabulary rather than stock — people searching for what you sell using words you haven't written down. Read the actual terms; the fix is normally a synonym — Show results for…, right beside the search — rather than buying.
Only if it keeps happening. One search is noise; the same thing twenty times is a customer telling you what to stock next.
Yes, on every template and every screen size.
Usually — matching is forgiving about small differences and plurals. Words you've never used anywhere on the site are what genuinely come back empty.
Not directly. Indirectly it's one of the best SEO tools you have, because the empty searches tell you exactly which words your pages are missing.