Can I keep a log of the search terms that my customers use on the site?

[KB]

You can enable search term monitoring by editing ActinicConstants.pm and removing the comment (the '#') from the line:

#$::SEARCH_WORD_LOG_FILE= "search.log";

Setting any non empty file name to $::SEARCH_WORD_LOG_FILE will result a log file. E.g.

$::SEARCH_WORD_LOG_FILE = "searchword.log";

… will create a file called 'searchword.log' in the acatalog directory on the web server.

The log file contains the following information:

#0 - Date/time
#1 - IP address
#2 - Customer ID
#3 - Buyer ID
#4 - Search terms
#5 - Number of results found

These values are comma separated. E.g. entering word "Desk" on the search page as unregistered customer will result the following line in the log file:

2002/04/11 19:17, 10.3.4.1, 0, 0, "desk", 0

If more than one search word is entered then the words are separated by spaces. E.g.

2002/04/11 20:00, 10.3.4.1, 0, 0, "desk fan", 0

A search made by a registered customer may look like this:

2002/04/11 19:17, 10.3.4.1, 2, 3, "desk", 4

This means that the search was made by a registered customer where the customer ID is '2', the buyer ID is '3' and the number of results returned was '4'.