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    • We collect Confluence feedback from various sources, and we evaluate what we've collected when planning our product roadmap. To understand how this piece of feedback will be reviewed, see our Implementation of New Features Policy.

      NOTE: This suggestion is for Confluence Server. Using Confluence Cloud? See the corresponding suggestion.

      Request Background

      Currently, Confluence does not provide the ability to logged search queries run by users. Having this information will allow administrator to compile data such as the necessary content that is not in Confluence yet.

      This will also help to arrange the information architecture to their behavior and to feed the Synonym plugin.

      Potential workarounds

      This information can be captured as part of access logging through Tomcat Valve (instructions). The below is an example of what Tomcat's access logging looks like when someone searches for "Example Search Query":

      [17/Mar/2017:16:37:57 -0500] admin Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_11_4) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/57.0.2987.98 Safari/537.36 0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1 GET GET /confluence/dosearchsite.action?queryString=Example+Search+Query HTTP/1.1 6651 200 http-nio-55912-exec-3
      

      If you have this type of logging enabled, either in Tomcat itself or in a reverse proxy, look for "dosearchsite.action" and parse out the data after "queryString=".

            [CONFSERVER-28959] Logged User Search Queries on Confluence

            You can use eazyBI for Confluence to analyze Confluence search queries, as well as page creation, update, and view statistics.

            Raimonds Simanovskis added a comment - You can use eazyBI for Confluence to analyze Confluence search queries, as well as page creation, update, and view statistics.

            Phil added a comment -

            I totally agree with Todd and Dave here. As a content manager, there's nothing more valuable than knowing what your users are searching for.

            I must add Google Analytics is no option for us here in Europe due to data privacy regulations. 

            @Sherif That's what we would do with the data: Provide better content! It's not only about suggesting search terms. Please make this happen. 

            Phil added a comment - I totally agree with Todd and Dave here. As a content manager, there's nothing more valuable than knowing what your users are searching for. I must add Google Analytics is no option for us here in Europe due to data privacy regulations.  @Sherif That's what we would do with the data: Provide better content! It's not only about suggesting search terms. Please make this happen. 

            I am also interested in this functionality.  Our previous software had this feature and just like Todd Thomas said above, it was a really great way to refine/update our content to align with our user base.  Sometimes they are not good at articulating why they are struggling finding content, by see how they are searching, we can make small changes to align with how they are looking which helps with the overall user experience and drives usage up.

            Dave Anderson added a comment - I am also interested in this functionality.  Our previous software had this feature and just like Todd Thomas said above, it was a really great way to refine/update our content to align with our user base.  Sometimes they are not good at articulating why they are struggling finding content, by see how they are searching, we can make small changes to align with how they are looking which helps with the overall user experience and drives usage up.

            Aleksandr Paren added a comment - Hi. Maybe my workaround will be helpful with the Confluence Cloud  https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-Cloud-discussions/How-to-see-users-search-phrases-in-Confluence-Cloud-in-Google/td-p/1251682

            Knowing what our users are searching for would help us create and review articles for that content. Theoretically we could maybe do some trend reporting on that over time, too, so we could see when some articles are accessed (or searched) more often.

            Todd Thomas added a comment - Knowing what our users are searching for would help us create and review articles for that content. Theoretically we could maybe do some trend reporting on that over time, too, so we could see when some articles are accessed (or searched) more often.

            This is definitely of interest to me - as a Tech Writer and Content Manager at my organization I'm very interested in being able to track user searches. This kind of data will help me fine-tune our documentation spaces to help folks find what they need easier.

            This combined with a kind of 'staleness' tracker would be of immense help to us.

            Graham Campbell added a comment - This is definitely of interest to me - as a Tech Writer and Content Manager at my organization I'm very interested in being able to track user searches. This kind of data will help me fine-tune our documentation spaces to help folks find what they need easier. This combined with a kind of 'staleness' tracker would be of immense help to us.

            elucify added a comment -

            User query analysis is useful for more than just synonyms. You can also use it to find out what is the natural way most users think about the concepts in your product, to guide things like documentation development, or to distinguish between known-item and topic searches.

            So a raw log of search terms is useful in and of itself.

            elucify added a comment - User query analysis is useful for more than just synonyms. You can also use it to find out what is the natural way most users think about the concepts in your product, to guide things like documentation development, or to distinguish between known-item and topic searches. So a raw log of search terms is useful in and of itself.

            Robert Chang added a comment - - edited

            I am reopening this issue as CONF-9268 (extend Lucene search) does not encapsulate the current request (log user search queries).

            Robert Chang added a comment - - edited I am reopening this issue as CONF-9268 (extend Lucene search) does not encapsulate the current request (log user search queries).

            Also very eager to have this functionality available for the same reasons as Stefan and Gabriel describe:

            by analyzing the search queries on our Confluence-based knowledge base, you can better finetune your content, such as building up synonym rings.

            I also have a question about that synonyms plugin:
            I understand it allows you to specify synomyms for labels only, not for text mentioned in the pages itself. Am I correct in this?

            Dennis De Smedt added a comment - Also very eager to have this functionality available for the same reasons as Stefan and Gabriel describe: by analyzing the search queries on our Confluence-based knowledge base, you can better finetune your content, such as building up synonym rings. I also have a question about that synonyms plugin: I understand it allows you to specify synomyms for labels only, not for text mentioned in the pages itself. Am I correct in this?

            I want to add that I would really appreciate this feature being added to Confluence. We have a large organization with lots of content to add. This would be an excellent way to determine what content people want.

            Gabriel Unger added a comment - I want to add that I would really appreciate this feature being added to Confluence. We have a large organization with lots of content to add. This would be an excellent way to determine what content people want.

              smansour Sherif Mansour
              scahyadiputra Septa Cahyadiputra (Inactive)
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                Created:
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