Tracking Etsy Searches with Google

With Site Search, you can see the search terms people are entering in Etsy's own search engine that are leading them to your items. You can also easily see the types of searches that people are performing and the percentage of your total visits that come from site searches.

This is a tremendous tool, and it's easy to set up. Here is a screencast video showing how to set up site search, or you can follow the directions below:

1. Go to your analytics settings page (the link says Analytics Settings and is in the top left corner of your analytics page)
2. Click the Edit link for your Etsy shop - the link is to the right of the site name
3. In the Main Website Profile Information header at the top of the page, click the Edit link on the right.
4. Under Site Search, select "Do track site search"
5. In the Query Parameter box, type in ga_search_query
6. Click the "Yes, strip query parameters" option
7. Under "Do you use catagories..." click Yes.
8. In the Category Parameter box, type in ga_search_type
9. Click the "Yes, strip query parameters" option
10. Click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page

Now go to your reports for your Etsy shop. Under the Content link on the left sidebar, you'll see a link called Site Search. Click on that link to see the search term reports. You will not see any data right away, but after some time you will see search terms and search types appear here.

Some of the site search reports are more useful than others:

Usage - shows how many of your visits are coming from Etsy searches and the percentage of your total visits that come from searches.

Search Terms - shows the actual terms that people enter to find your items. These are the not all of the searches that your item actually may show up in, but are the searches where someone actually clicked through to one of your items.

Categories - This shows the search types people use to find your items, including when they search from within categories.

Trending - This report breaks down your search visits by hour, day, week or month.

I've updated the list of referral codes to include the Etsy search type codes so you can tell what kinds of searches are leading people to your items. You can find it here.