# Mining your customers' internal searches for long-tail keywords

> A term typed fifty times by a qualified audience is worth more than a thousand-search keyword of which you capture nothing. How to extract and classify this data, turn it into a content plan, and tell real catalog gaps from engine defects.

- Page: <https://www.datafirefly.com/en/2026/09/30/internal-searches-long-tail-keywords-prestashop/>
- Language: en
- Published: 2026-09-30
- Last updated: 2026-09-30
- Other languages: [fr](https://www.datafirefly.com/2026/09/30/recherches-internes-mots-cles-longue-traine-prestashop/index.md), [es](https://www.datafirefly.com/es/2026/09/30/busquedas-internas-palabras-clave-larga-cola-prestashop/index.md), [de](https://www.datafirefly.com/de/2026/09/30/interne-suchanfragen-long-tail-keywords-prestashop/index.md), [it](https://www.datafirefly.com/it/2026/09/30/ricerche-interne-parole-chiave-coda-lunga-prestashop/index.md), [pl](https://www.datafirefly.com/pl/2026/09/30/wyszukiwania-wewnetrzne-slowa-kluczowe-dlugi-ogon-prestashop/index.md), [nl](https://www.datafirefly.com/nl/2026/09/30/interne-zoekopdrachten-longtail-zoekwoorden-prestashop/index.md), [pt](https://www.datafirefly.com/pt/2026/09/30/pesquisas-internas-palavras-chave-cauda-longa-prestashop/index.md)
- Index: <https://www.datafirefly.com/en/2026/llms.txt>

Every day, your customers type into your internal search engine expressions that describe exactly what they are looking for, in their own words. It is a keyword source nobody else has, free, and without the approximation of volume estimation tools.

## Why this data beats a keyword tool

Three advantages, two of which are decisive.

**It comes from your real buyers**, not a national sample. A term typed fifty times on your site by a qualified audience is worth more than a keyword with a thousand monthly searches of which you capture nothing.

**It is phrased in the customer's vocabulary**, which often differs from yours. Merchants speak in references and categories, customers in uses and problems.

**It is fresh.** A trend appears in your internal searches before being visible in the tools, whose data lags several weeks behind.

Its limit: volume. On a small store, the data is too sparse to be usable. Count on at least a few thousand searches over the period analysed.

## Extracting the data

PrestaShop records internal searches and makes them viewable in the statistics. Two reports to produce.

**Searches with results**, ranked by number of occurrences. Take the top two hundred over twelve months.

**Searches with no result**, ranked the same way. They are handled separately because they tell a different story.

If possible, add two columns: the number of searches and the click-through rate to a product. An expression searched a lot but followed by few clicks signals that your results do not match the expectation.

A point of method: clean before analysing. Remove one-character searches, internal tests from your own address, and group the spelling variants of the same term.

## The four families of searches

Classification is what makes the data actionable, and it is done by hand on two hundred lines in an hour.

**Searches by reference.** The customer knows the product and wants to go straight to it. They produce no useful keywords, but they tell you that your engine must search the references and not only the titles.

**Searches by category.** A generic term matching an existing family. If the customer types "drill" rather than going through the menu, your navigation does not get them there fast enough.

**Searches by attribute or by use.** "Cordless drill 18V", "waterproof hiking jacket". This is the main deposit: these expressions describe a precise intent and correspond to long-tail queries.

**Out-of-catalog searches.** Products you do not sell, or no longer sell. They feed your thinking on the assortment.

## What you get out of it: the content plan

Searches by attribute or by use turn into pages, following three treatments.

**They match an existing facet** that is not open to indexing. It is the most frequent and most profitable case: the page already exists technically, you only need to give it a title, an introduction and open it.

**They match a grouping absent** from your structure. You create a selection page, with the matching products and content of its own.

**They carry a question rather than a product need.** "Which drill for concrete" belongs to the buying guide, not the category page. It is an article topic.

A prioritisation marker: handle first the expressions with high internal volume and low click-through rate. Those are the ones where demand exists and your current answer is bad.

## What you get out of it: the sourcing plan

It is the most neglected use and often the most profitable.

No-result searches on products you do not sell are an expressed demand, counted, with a known volume. No market study gives you that.

Three readings.

**The missing product.** Fifty monthly searches on a brand you do not carry justify examining the question of listing that brand.

**The incomplete range.** Searches on sizes, powers or variants you do not have in a category where you are present.

**The complementary product.** Searches on accessories or consumables linked to what you sell, and that you do not offer.

The third case is the simplest to handle and it raises the average basket without new acquisition.

## The no-result searches that are not gaps

Beware of concluding too fast: a significant share of no-result searches concerns products you have.

Four causes.

**The typo**, fixed by spelling tolerance in the engine.

**The synonym**, when the customer uses a word your pages do not. The fix goes through a synonym dictionary, not a catalog rewrite.

**The out-of-stock product**, if your engine excludes unavailable items. Better to display them with their status.

**The overly long search**, a full sentence the engine cannot process.

Before opening a sourcing project, check these four points on your top twenty no-result searches. You will often find that half of them are down to the engine and not the catalog.

## The method in five steps

**1.** Extract the top two hundred searches with results and the top one hundred without, over twelve months.

**2.** Clean and group the variants.

**3.** Classify each line into one of the four families.

**4.** For each expression in the attribute or use family, note whether a page exists, a facet exists, or nothing exists.

**5.** Prioritise on internal volume crossed with creation effort.

This work is done in a spreadsheet in half a day, and it generally produces between twenty and fifty usable topics on a mid-sized catalog.

## The rhythm

A complete exercise once a year, a quick reading every quarter.

The quarterly reading is limited to newly appeared expressions and recent no-result searches. It takes an hour and it captures seasonal trends, which are exactly the ones to handle in advance.

Two moments impose an off-schedule reading: after adding a new range, to check that customers find it, and before a strong commercial period, to prepare the corresponding pages.

The  industrialises the next step on PrestaShop 8 and 9: transformation of recurring internal searches into landing pages with title, introduction and product selection, controlled opening to indexing and tracking of the traffic generated by each page created.