Since starting WordPress Modder, I’ve found the most difficult part of helping people was predicting what kind of information visitors to this site are looking for. Oh sure, it’s easy to assume that visitors are looking for WordPress related mods and hacks, theme and plugin reviews, and tools that make developing with WordPress easier, but I needed to know what words they were searching for specifically. But how?
By installing the Psychic Search plugin from MaxBlogPress. This has been one of the most helpful plugins I’ve ever installed. Basically, this plugin logs every search term that is entered in the search box on your site and then displays those results to you in the admin area. Not only that, but it also tells you if the user was returned any matching results. As you might imagine, it is incredibly useful in helping you learn what people are searching for, and expect to find on your site.
For example, if I see that there are any searches that return no results, it’s obvious that if I want to really serve my readers, I better start researching some answers on those and make some posts to help people find what they’re looking for. Here’s a screen shot of the results that the Psychic Search plugin displays on WordPress Modder.
Pretty nifty huh?
One thing that does bother me a bit about the plugin download page is that it has kind of a heavy sales pitch for a free WordPress plugin. That caused me to hesitate a bit before installing it, but after some research it seemed legit, so I gave it a shot and again, I couldn’t be happier.
You can find the Psychic Search plugin here.
