Capturing site search parameters from the URL hash in Google Analytics

Question

We want to capture aggregated, anonymous search query history for analytic purposes to improve our internal search engine performance and metadata practices.

I found this article: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1012264?hl=en

Unfortunately, our search engine uses a hash tag instead of a question mark (nonstandard query string).

For example: http://www.example.com/search#q=search%20term

Is there a way to configure Google Analytics to recognize hash tag values in the URLs and capture these given a defined pattern?

Answer 1

I'm not certain about the # aspect but under the admin settings find the "track internal site search" setting and enable it. It won't allow you to enable it without including the query parameters and I assume you can just specify them there (up to 5).

I believe this is true in ga.js and analytics.js (aka 'Universal Analytics' which is now in public beta...for sure it is in Universal, but I think it's in ga.js as well)