[ic] How can I log search requests?

[Ed LaFrance]

At 08:41 AM 08/11/2001 -0600, you wrote:
>I am interested in trying to capture and log search requests that are
>entered in by my customers from both the small and advanced search forms.
>
>It is valuable to me to know what people are looking for when they come to
>my store.  Also even more valuable is to know what they are looking for but
>didn't find.
>
>Has anyone already set up something similar?  Any ideas about how to go
>about this?  I didn't see anything in the archives.
>
>Thanks,
>
>-Mike Thompson

Back in MV3 there was a catalog.cfg directive called CollectData:

CollectData
The points at which to log various data items collected by MiniVend, such 
as failed or successful searches. This allows you to find out what your 
customers are searching for and NOT finding -- perhaps you want to add it, 
or change your product description to match. Uses something like the HTTP 
common log format.
The choices to enter are:


   matched    Search strings that match
   nomatch    Search strings that fail to match
   page       Pages that are accessed
   nopage     Pages that are not found
   basket     Items placed in shopping carts
   cache      Pages/searches added to cache

Enter as a space or comma-separated list, i.e.


     CollectData   matched,nomatch,page

...but it couldn't grep it in IC 4.x.x.  You can roll your own without too 
much trouble; take a look the [log] tag, which could be used to construct 
logging code, which you could include in a [no-match] block on your results 
page to catch those failed searches.

- Ed L.



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