Web Marketing: How to Track a Site Search in Google Analytics

By John Arnold, Michael Becker, Marty Dickinson, Ian Lurie, and Elizabeth Marsten from Web Marketing All-in-One For Dummies, 2nd Edition

If you have a search box on your website, it makes sense to track what folks type into it. You can find out a lot about your audience, which is what web marketing is all about.

To set up a site search, follow these steps:

Log in to Google Analytics.
Select the website for which you want to track site search.
Click Admin at the upper-right of the page.
Click the Profile Settings tab and scroll down to Site Search Settings.
Select the Do Track Site Search radio button.
Leave this page open in your browser. Open a separate browser window for the next few steps.
In the new browser window, go to your website.
Search for buggy bumpers, using your site’s search tool.
Look at the address of the search result page.

You should find the words buggy bumpers in the address, as well as a query attribute (such as q= or search=).
Enter the query attribute into the Query Parameter field in Google Analytics.
Click Apply.

You’re done. Within a few hours, you’ll start seeing the phrases people search for on your site.