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Find tools and resources for analysing content

Find out what terms users are searching for

Looking at popular search terms can help you:

  • identify user needs
  • use popular terms in the titles, headings and first paragraphs of your content to make it easier to find – this is called search engine optimisation (SEO)

You’ll need to use different tools to find out search terms used on:

  • external search sites, like Google
  • the internal GOV.UK site search tool

Find search terms used on external search sites

Access a free trial of a ‘keyword planner’. You can select a term and see how it’s used in searches. For example, you can see what information users want to know about a ‘driving licence’.

Some examples include:

If you want to compare the relative popularity of search terms used over time, use Google Trends. This can help you decide which term to use in your content to make it easier to find, like by figuring out if more users search for the term ‘heavy goods vehicle’ or the word ‘lorry’.

Find search terms used on the GOV.UK search tool

You’ll need a GOV.UK Google Analytics account to use this tool. If you do not have an account, your organisation’s analytics ‘single point of contact’ (SPOC) will need to raise a ticket. If you do not know who your SPOC is, raise an analytics ticket.

When you use Google Analytics, keep in mind that:

  • the data is only from users who opt in by clicking ‘Accept additional cookies’ in the cookies banner
  • you’ll not usually get accurate data from time periods before October 2023 – you can get accurate data from before then if you raise an analytics ticket
  • you’ll see a red warning symbol if the data has been sampled – you can click on the symbol and select ‘More detailed results’ to reduce sampling or you can request unsampled data

To find the search terms used on the GOV.UK search tool:

  1. Go to the template internal search exploration.
  2. Select ‘Make a copy’.

You’ll see the top 50 search terms used over the last 28 days.

If you want to change the time period, select ‘Last 28 days’ in the ‘Variables’ column. Looking at short date ranges will give you a greater chance of seeing full, unsampled data.

If you want to see how often a certain word or term is used:

  1. Select ‘+ Drop or select dimension or metric’ under ‘Filters’ in the ‘Settings’ column.
  2. Select ‘Search term’.
  3. Under the ‘Select match type’ dropdown, select either ‘exactly matches’ or ‘contains’, depending on if you’re looking for an exact match or just the presence of a word.
  4. In the ‘Enter expression’ text box, type in the term you want to look for. Use lowercase only – if you use capital letters you will not get the results you’re looking for. For example, use ‘evisa’ and not ‘eVisa’.
  5. Select ‘Apply’.

You can also use the GOV.UK trending searches dashboard. This shows search terms that are currently ‘trending’ on the GOV.UK search tool (being searched for more than usual).