Usage Analytics and Recommendations

Usage Analytics and Recommendations : Usage analytics in SharePoint Server 2013 automatically tracks how users view different items. Every time that a user views an item, the system issues a usage event and adds the event to the total and recent view counts for that item.

The following usage events are preconfigured:

• Views – number of views for a single item, page, or document.
• Recommendations Displayed – number of times a single item, page, or document appeared as a recommendation.
• Recommendation Clicks – number of times a single item, page, or document was clicked when it was displayed as a recommendation.

The usage analytics information can help you to configure recommendations on your site. The recommendations that are shown are based on how users previously interacted with a site, tracked by the usage events.

You can use the data that is generated by usage events in the following ways:

• Show recommendations or popular items on your site. By using recommendations, you can guide users to other content that may be relevant for them, based on how users previously interacted with the site. You can add recommendations to a page by adding one or more Web Parts. The Recommended Items and Popular Items Web Parts are especially designed to show recommendations.
• Sort search results by the number of counts of a usage event. For example, show items that have the most view events at the top of search results.
• View the usage event data in the Most Popular Items usage report. This report applies to all items in a library and lists the most popular items for each usage event — for example, a list of the most viewed pages in a library.
• View the usage event data in the Popularity Trends report. This report applies to a Site Collection, a Site or an individual item in a library or list. The report shows the daily and monthly counts for each usage event — for example, the total views of a page on a specific day.

There are several reports for search that are created by default. As a search administrator you can easily follow the trends over time. That is, you can  see what generates top queries, if people do not find what they look for (0 result queries), and more. This information is valuable to use when updates are made to query suggestions, query spelling, and so on.