Search Engine Report

The Logging & Reporting > Web Protection > Search Engine Report page provides information on search engines used by your users and searches they made. At a first glance, this page looks very complicated, but the best way to start is to use it and learn from the results.

Page Structure

Header Bar

First there is the header bar which consists of the following elements:

Home: This icon takes you back to the beginning, clear of any clicks or filters.
Forward/Backward: Use these icons to move back and forth along the history of your changes and settings. It works like in every web browser.
Available Reports: This drop-down list contains all available report types including, if existent, your saved reports. It is set to Searches by default. The result table of the Search Engine Report page is directly dependent on this reporting type setting.

Note – When using filters and clicking through reports notice how the Available Reports setting changes automatically. It always reflects the current reporting basis.

Standard: There are three report types available, see below for a detailed description.

Saved Search Engine Reports: Here you can select saved search engine reports you created in the past.
Delete: Click this icon to delete a saved search engine report. Standard reports cannot be deleted.
Save: Click this icon to save a current view to be able to access this view easily in the future. It will be stored in the Available Reports drop-down list.

Filter Bar

Next there is the filter bar which consists of the following elements:

Plus: Click this icon to create additional filters, see below for a detailed description.
Amount: Use the drop-down list to reduce the amount of results in the table. You can limit the results to the top 10, top 50, or top 100 results.
Time: Use the drop-down list to limit or expand the results in the table to certain time frames. The Custom timeframe allows you to specify your own timeframe.
Departments: Use the drop-down list to limit the results in the table to defined departments. Departments can be created on the Departments page.

You can download the data in PDF or Excel format by clicking one of the corresponding icons on the right of the filter bar. The report is generated from the current view you have selected. Additionally, by clicking the Pie Chart icon you can get a pie chart displayed above the table. If you click the Send icon, a dialog window opens where you can enter one or more email recipients who should receive this report as well as a subject and a message before sending the data. You can also receive saved reports on a regular basis, see section Scheduled Reports for more information.

Results Table

Last, there is the results table. What you see here depends firstly on the selected report type (always reflected at Available Reports list) and secondly on possibly defined filters. The following report types are available:

Searches: Displays the search terms your users used.
Search Engines: Displays the search engines your users used.
Users Searches: Displays the users who did searches.

Note – When anonymization is enabled, users are not displayed by their name or IP address but they appear enumerated instead.

For each report type, the table provides the following information:

#: Position with regard to frequency.

Requests: Number of requests for a search term, for a search engine, or by a user.

%: Percentage on overall searches.

Defining Filters

Filters are used to drill down the information displayed in the result table. They can be defined in two different ways: either by clicking the Plus icon in the Filter Bar or by clicking into the table.

Via Plus icon: After clicking the green Plus icon in the Filter Bar, a small filter box with two fields is displayed. The first field, a drop-down list, lets you choose a report type, for example Search Engine. The second field lets you choose or enter a value for the selected report type, e.g. Google (google.com) when Search Engine is selected. Click Save to save the filter and at the same time apply it to the result table. Search terms are case insensitive and support wildcards: '*' to match zero or more characters and '?' to match one character.

Via table: Clicking into the table opens a dialog window Reporting Direction if there is more than one report type available for the item you clicked. You need to select one of the presented options for filtering. After that the Reporting Direction window closes, the relevant filter is created and displayed in the Filter Bar. The results table now shows the newly filtered results.

Example: The default report of the Search Engine Report is Searches. In the results table you click on any row (e.g. weather). The Reporting Direction window opens and gives you two options: either you want to see information on the search engines used for the search (Search Engines) or on users who searched for this term (Users Searches). You see that several users searched for weather and you want to know more about this, so you click the Users Searches box. The window closes. In the Header Bar you see that the report type changed to Users Searches and in the Filter Bar you see that the result table for Users Searches is filtered by the search you selected (weather). Therefore the table shows all users who searched for weather and additionally information on those searches.