Definition: nb_pages_per_search

General questions
1

Hi all,

I had a question about definitions. I’m running some baselining on search before making some changes. I’m interested in nb_pages_per_search. On the page developer.matomo.org/guides/archive-data, it defines this as “The average number of search result pages viewed after a site search.”.

I’m not clear if this means multiple results pages where they are paginated onto multiple pages, or if this means simply the number of results that were clicked on.

For example, if I search for “tiger” and there are 35 results shown as 20 results on the first page and 15 on the second, and I click on three of the suggested pages on the first page of results. Then is this

a) recorded as one on nb_pages_per_search (because I didn’t view the second page of results), or
b) recorded as three on nb_pages_per_search (because I clicked on three suggestions from the first page of results).

With thanks to any who can shed light on the definition.

Stuart.

2

From my experience:
If there is one search hit hit to Matomo, It will deduce there is only 1 page of results.
If there is a second search hit with the same parameters (keyword + category), Matomo will consider it is a second page of results

3

Thanks Phillippe. That’s helpful. It suggests that the data I’m seeing is for a single page of results and that definition b above is the better one.