About this plugin
SearchMiner is a passive observer for your site search. It records what
visitors search for, flags every search that returned zero results and shows
searches where visitors got results but clicked nothing — the quiet revenue
leak most sites never measure.
It does not replace your search. Keep the search you already have (native
WordPress search, WooCommerce product search) — SearchMiner simply tells you
what it is missing.
Highlights:
- Top searches, top zero-result searches and top “searched but clicked nothing” queries
- Searches per day chart with the zero-result share highlighted
- WooCommerce aware: product searches are marked separately
- Dashboard widget: the zero-result searches your visitors made most
- Privacy first: no IP addresses, no user accounts stored; automatic retention
(30–365 days); one-click erase of all recorded searches
- Bots and crawlers are filtered out, so numbers mean people
- No data leaves your server
How it works
When a visitor loads a search results page, SearchMiner records the phrase
and the number of results. If result tracking is enabled, a tiny script on
the results page sends one beacon when the visitor clicks a result — or one
beacon when they leave without clicking anything. That is all.
Limitations (honest list)
- Searches served entirely from a full-page cache bypass PHP and are not recorded
- AJAX search widgets (third-party) are not recorded in this version
- The plugin counts behaviour; it cannot tell you visitor intent
Pro Version
An optional companion plugin adds (one license = one site, 12 months of updates):
- Typo clustering — groups misspellings (“snearkers”) with the real query
- Revenue-at-risk matching — links zero-result searches to existing products
- Weekly email digest with the top fixes for your shop
The free version is fully functional on its own and never limited.
com/product/searchminer/
External Services
By default the free plugin makes no outgoing requests: SearchMiner stores
search phrases in your own database. The only developer connection is the
optional, off-by-default error telemetry described at the end of this
section — nothing is sent until you enable it yourself.
For transparency: the package ships a shared Telegram delivery helper that
stays completely inert in the free version and is only activated by the
optional SearchMiner Pro companion (a separate plugin). If you enable
org — the
Telegram Bot API — using the bot token you configure yourself.
org/privacy
* Optional, off by default: anonymous error reports. If the admin enables
the checkbox in the plugin settings, a daily batch of sanitized error
signatures (message, file name:line, culprit plugin/theme, first stack
frames, plugin/WP/PHP versions, site address) is sent to
com/api/telemetry so bugs can be reproduced and fixed.
Nothing is sent while the checkbox is off.
Why: I am an independent developer, and this is the only way I learn about
bugs I cannot reproduce myself. The free plugin makes no requests at all
until you enable this option; when an error happens, an anonymous
com so I can fix it in the next release.
Nothing else ever leaves your site, and you can switch it off at any
moment. Every report is read by a human.
Example of exactly what one report looks like (sanitized):
2
That is the whole payload — no content, no user data, no usage tracking.
Disabling telemetry clears any queued reports immediately.
com/en/terms/
com/en/privacy/