Changing search submits to search result views

Starting at the end of this week after business hours, we will communicate top search analytics in most cases in terms of result view events, rather than search submissions.

What are these events?

• Search submits are sent when users execute a search from the search bar (or select a search suggestion).
• Search result views are sent when users view a search page.

Why are we making the change?

We originally focused on search submits as they help to understand user search intent on a site or particular page (as opposed to inbound traffic). They can also be less prone to tracking errors due to their reliance on HTML form submissions.

Search result view events provide a picture of all traffic to the search page, whether it came from off-site, through the search bar, or links on-site. These events are what we use to analyze data science optimizations internally and align best to what customer merchant and product teams most commonly associate as a "search".

Are search submit events still displayed anywhere?

Yes! Search submissions are shown next to search result view events in all search interact pages. You can see these today for any interact page (accessible from the interact page here)

Search Click and Add-to-Cart Rates

We now communicate search add-to-cart rates (or ATCR) and clickthrough counts and rates over time in the search analytics overview page and search term detail pages.

Click and Add-to-Cart rates help understand how user behavior is changing over time at a global level, as well as for individual queries. One use case is to enable merchants to observe how their actions may be impacting user behavior on particular search terms.