Track Searches

The Search event

This event will be fired when a search is performed on your website.

On Facebook and Pinterest, the event will send these parameters:

• search_string: the exact searched word or phrase
• content_name
• content_category
• tag
• post_type
• post_id
• domain
• traffic_source
• UTMs
• Visitor’s browser’s time (hour, day, month)
• user’s role
• domain name
• plugin’s name

On Google Analytics, the event will have the following structure:

• Event Category: WordPress Search or WooCommerce Search
• Event Action: search
• Event Label: the search string

How to use the Search Event on Facebook

The most obvious way to use it is to create Custom Audiences, but you can also come up with some niche strategies involving Custom Conversions.

One Custom Audience to retarget can use the Search Event with no other conditions (if you have the same pixel on multiple sites, make sure you add the domain name parameter as a condition too). This audience will be populated with every user that performs ANY search on your site. They are highly engaged people, already know you, and it will be smart to retarget them.

Another more advanced strategy will be to use the Search Event together with the search_string parameter and target only users that perform a search for a relevant keyword.