Joomla! Documentation™

Overview

The Search Manager: Search Term Analysis back-end screen allows you to view statistics about searches performed by visitors of your site.

Note: By default, statistics functionality is disabled after installing Joomla! -- refer to Options for information on enabling statistics.

How to Access

Select Components → Search from the drop-down menu of the Joomla! Administrator Panel.

Description

The Search Statistics screen allows you to see how many searches were done for each keyword combination and how many results were returned for each search.

Screenshot

Column Headers

• #. An indexing number automatically assigned by Joomla! for ease of reference.
• Search Phrase. The search text entered by the user.
• Hits. The number of times users searched for this phrase.
• Results. The number of search results returned to the user for this search text.

You can click the 'Search Phrase' or 'Hits' column headers to sort the list by these values. Click again to sort in the reverse order.

List Settings

Statistics Status, Showing/Hiding Results Count

In the upper right corner there are more fields, as shown below:

• Gathering statistics enabled / Gathering statistics disabled. If the options parameter called "Gather Search Statistics" is set to "Yes", this will display as "Enabled". Otherwise, it will display as "Disabled". See Options for information on enabling and disabling statistics.
• Show Search Results / Hide Search Results. Toggle this link to show or hide the "Results" column values.

Number of Items to Display

Below the list you'll find: Chunk25:Help screen list Display Count

Toolbar

At the top right you will see the toolbar:

The functions are:

• Reset. Resets the search log to its initial, empty state. Warning: This will erase all prior search statistics information.
• Options. Opens the Options window where settings such as default parameters or permissions can be edited.
• Help. Opens this help screen.

Options

In the toolbar, click on the Options button to open the Search Manager Options window.

Component Tab

In this window, the "Component" tab allows you to set various parameters for Search Statistics, as shown below:

• Gather Search Statistics. Whether or not to gather search statistics for the web site. If set to "No", no information will be collected from users searches. This means that no information will be displayed in the Search Statistics screen. This is set to "No" by default.
• Use Search Areas. Whether or not to show the search areas checkboxes in the front-end search options, so user can choose what kind of items to search. This is set to "Yes" by default. Can be overridden in the List Search Results menu item.
• Creation Date. Whether or not to show the Creation Date for items that are displayed in search results in the front-end. This is set to "Show" by default. Can be overridden in the List Search Results menu item.

Permissions Tab

This screen allows you to set the component permissions in Joomla. This is important to consider if you have sites with many different user categories all of whom need to have different accessibilities to the component. The screenshot below describes what you should see and the text below that describes what each permission level gives the user access to:

You work on one Group at a time by opening the slider for that group. You change the permissions in the Select New Settings drop-down list boxes. The options for each value are Inherited, Allowed, or Denied. The Calculated Setting column shows you the setting in effect. It is either Not Allowed (the default), Allowed, or Denied. Note that the Calculated Setting column is not updated until you press the Save button in the toolbar. To check that the settings are what you want, press the Save button and check the Calculated Settings column.

The default values used here are the ones set in the Global Configuration Permissions Tab

Access Administration Interface

Open the component manger screens

There are two very important points to understand from this screen. The first is to see how the permissions can be inherited from the parent Group. The second is to see how you can control the default permissions by Group and by Action. This provides a lot of flexibility. For example, if you wanted Shop Suppliers to be able to have the ability to create an article about their product, you could just change their Create value to "Allowed". If you wanted to not allow members of Administrator group to delete objects or change their state, you would change their permissions in these columns to Inherited (or Denied). It is also important to understand that the ability to have child groups is completely optional. It allows you to save some time when setting up new groups. However, if you like, you can set up all groups to have Public as the parent and not inherit any permissions from a parent group.

Quick Tips

• This screen does not enable or disable searching of the web site. Searching is enabled either by adding an Internal Link - Search Menu Item or by adding a Search Module.
• Search statistics are disabled by default. If you're interested in knowing what your visitors search for and what they find, you'll need to enable search statistics. Refer to Options for more information.

Related Information

• To add a Search Menu Item: Menu Item Manager - New/Edit - Internal Link - Search
• To add a Search Module: Modules Site - Search