Now that we’ve navigated the great migration, it's time to peek behind the digital curtain and see how things are shaping up in our new home. As a search and SEO enthusiast, I'm curious about what queries driving traffic and user behavior. What are our members searching for? What content is grabbing their attention? Is there content that users are begging for and not finding? Armed with a few weeks' worth of data, I was ready to see take the search analytics tools for a spin.
So, what exactly are our community members typing into that little search bar? While most folks initially find their way to SAP Community pages via the big G, it's interesting to observe how their search behavior evolves once they've landed here. (Fun fact: In 2023, we averaged over 215k monthly searches – and now, with new tools, we're charting a new course.)
Let’s dive in and have a look at the top search terms* of the last almost-month.
* The Khoros instructional text reads:
The total number of search terms or phrases entered by users that returned search results; sorted by the number of times all users have entered those terms. This number includes all types of searches (community, category, board, TKB, and user).
This metric approximates user behavior and therefore excludes almost all nonhuman requests (Web crawlers, robots, RSS feeds, REST API calls).
This metric also excludes related search behavior like filtering results, paging through search results, “instant” search, and autocomplete.
Cracking the top 10 we see SAP staples (“sap analytics cloud,” “abap,” “ewm”) mingling with seasonal queries such as “w2” and the fashionable "generative ai".
All those high-level SAP keywords at the top are indicative of navigational intent, suggesting a typical search behavior and comfort level with SAP branded terms… or perhaps something less optimistic, like difficulty finding information or confusing structure.
I’m sure nobody has an opinion on that.... hey look, word cloud!
What does it tell you?
For any given query I’m able to drill in and see which posts drove the most traffic, as well as related expressions. The top post for the query "generative ai" was a blog post about generative AI hub.
Dead-end Queries
On the other side, what about those searches that hit a dead end?
First, a curious revelation: Some straddle both lists, caught between a search query and the void of unfulfilled results. Apparently, you can enter a search term and apply filters until you've faceted yourself out of luck – a plight even the mighty "abap" cannot escape.
If there’s one point of this, it should be to investigate this data to find ways to bridge the gap between your questions and the answers you seek.
To that end, I downloaded the results as CSV and clustered similar searches, for example a very popular search involving NULL results. It’s a lot of cryptic number strings and wingdings. Sometimes names and emails (which I've kindly blotted out)! And even some cursing – "s/4hana cloud" 😉.
Even if this storm cloud doesn’t exactly make it clear what content might be missing, it’s a start.
These musings are just the beginning of the journey. Join the search party and share your thoughts and insights – together, we'll uncover the secrets that lie within!
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