engines (our OER hackday coursedetective was built around one) and I know a few sites use them to search over a set of domains on an instituional site (eg Cambridge University library use a Google CSE to search over local library related websites),
But have had some problems tracking search on them... Google CSEs can be embedded in iframes, or displayed in a page using javascript. Limited tracking of search words is provided by the CSE statistics report, but better tracking requires linking with Google Analytics. The frame based embed puts search terms in to the URL which can be tracked by Google Analytics. But something I havenlt worked out yet, is how to integrate Google Analytics with the AJAX/js route. It strikes me that event tracking should allow tracking of both search terms and the outgoing results links that are clicked on using GA event tracking but I havenlt worked out how. (Martin Hawksey got instant search working with CSEs, but that recipe doesn't seem to work with the GA code:-(
In terms of useful things, a library that can grab search term and click data from Google CSEs into Google Analytics would be a handy thing to have, and provide a way of collecting search and action data from CSEs, if folk are running them. It's not search log analysis, but it'd be really handy tool for anyone using a Google CSE wanting to build up search logs.
Realted to this, I think that folk who do run Google Analytics don't necessarily get as much benefit from them as they might... How many people run filters and adcanced/custom segments, i wonder, in generating reports? A couple of worked cases showing how to set up Google analytics in an academic context may be something worth doing?
tony
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Tony Hirst
twitter: @psychemedia
Dept. of Communication & Systems,
The Open University, Walton Hall,
Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK
Tel: +44 (0)19086 52789, m./SMS 07771 330 372
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