WordPress.org

You can find, download and install Search Meter directly from the Plugins section in WordPress.

If you have an older version of WordPress, download and unzip the search-meter.zip file and upload to the /wp-content/plugins/search-meter directory. Then activate the plugin through the Plugins section in WordPress.

Widgets: Popular and Recent Searches

The Popular Searches widget displays a list of the most popular successful search terms on your blog during the last 30 days. The Recent Searches widget displays a simple list of the most recent successful search terms. In both cases, the search terms in the lists are hyperlinked to the actual search results; readers can click the search term to show the results for that search. You can configure the title of each widget, and the maximum number of searches that each widget will display.

To add these widgets to your sidebar, log in to WordPress Admin, go to the Appearance section and click Widgets. You can drag the appropriate widget to the sidebar of your choice, and set the title and the number of searches to display.

Template Tags

If you are using an older version of WordPress or an old theme, you may not be able to use the widgets. In any case, you can always use the Search Meter template tags to display the same information. You'll need to edit your theme to use them.

The sm_list_popular_searches() template tag displays a list of the 5 most popular successful search terms on your blog during the last 30 days. Each term is a hyperlink; readers can click the search term to show the results for that search. Here are some examples of using this template tag.

sm_list_popular_searches()

Show a simple list of the 5 most popular recent successful search terms, hyperlinked to the actual search results.

sm_list_popular_searches('<h2>Popular Searches</h2>')

Show the list as above, with the heading "Popular Searches". If there have been no successful searches, then this tag displays no heading and no list.

sm_list_popular_searches('<li><h2>Popular Searches</h2>', '</li>')

Show the headed list as above; this form of the tag should be used in the default WordPress theme. Put it in the sidebar.php file.

sm_list_popular_searches('<li><h2>Popular Searches</h2>', '</li>', 10)

This is the same as the above, but it shows the 10 most popular searches.

sm_list_recent_searches()

Show a simple list of the 5 most recent successful search terms, hyperlinked to the actual search results. You can also use the same options as for the sm_list_popular_searches tag.