KnowledgeOwl currently doesn't have its own built-in analytics, so many of our customers use a third-party analytics tool, like:
Most of these third-party analytics tools require you to embed a tracking code into your knowledge base.
To do that:
- Go to Customize > Style (HTML & CSS).
- In the Customize HTML, CSS, and JS section, select Custom <head>.
- Paste your embed code in here. We recommend adding a comment to indicate the day and person who added it, but that's entirely up to you!
- Be sure to Save.
Once your code is added to the Custom Head, your third-party analytics tool should start tracking data.
Check with the analytics provider of your choice for additional/more detailed setup instructions.
There are two ways you might want to capture search-related analytics information:
- Search engine terms: If your knowledge base is publicly available, you may want to know what search terms people searched for that brought them into your knowledge base
- Knowledge base search terms: You may want to see what terms people are searching for once they're in your knowledge base
Search engine terms
If your knowledge base is publicly available, you may want to know how random people performing searches are finding your knowledge base. The de facto standard for this currently is Google Search Console. You don't need to use Google Analytics to use Google Search Console, which is a tool tied to Google's search engine itself. See their Getting Started guide for more information.
Google has kept fairly tight control over these things, but some third-party analytics tools offer integrations with Google Search Console to pull its data directly into their own platforms (Plausible can, for example). So while you may need to set up Google Search Console to get some of this info, you may not have to use Google's interface or tools directly after you've done that. 😉
If you're already using or already plan to use a third-party analytics tool, check to see if it has a Google Search Console integration.
Knowledge base search terms
Some third-party analytics tools provide analytics and reporting around search terms so you can see what people are searching for in your knowledge base itself.
This may take some research into the tool you're interested in, for example:
- Google Analytics calls this Site Search
- FullStory suggests capturing this in a Top Search Terms metric
See what kind of options your third-party analytics tool offers for this kind of analysis.
When searches are performed in your knowledge base, we adjust the URL to include: /search?phrase={search phrase}&Search=
You should be able to target that search?phrase={search phrase} portion to get a list of terms.
For customers with knowledge bases that require login, one of the most common questions we get asked in the analytics and reporting discussion is: can I see what individual readers are doing in my knowledge base?
Currently, KnowledgeOwl doesn't offer this kind of per-reader tracking and reporting. (Though contact us if you're interested in it, since we are tracking interest in this as a feature!)
If you want to do this kind of reporting, we recommend using a third-party analytics tool to do so.
You have a couple options:
- Use a general-purpose analytics tool.
- Example: Google Analytics
- Pros: These tools can handle a lot of analytics and reporting needs. Many are free or quite reasonably priced.
- Cons: Many of these general analytics tools (Google included) don't want you storing personally identifiable information for individuals within their platforms, so you'll need to pass over the reader's ID from KnowledgeOwl and use that ID to generate reports.
- Use an analytics tool geared toward individual analytics. These often include session recordings or other metrics.
- Example: FullStory or Mixpanel
- Pros: These are tools specifically built to handle reporting and analytics at the individual level, so they have a lot of tooling around it.
- Cons: These are generally more costly analytics tools and it does mean you'd be capturing information about your readers in a third-party tool, which may require additional disclosures or cookie notifications.
