FAQ – Frequently asked questions
FAQ – start in 5 min with CyTRAP BlogRank
Step 1: Sign up (learn how it works) actual sign-up is here
Step 2: Add blogs you want tracked
CyTRAP BlogRank – FACTSHEET
CyTRAP BlogRank – FAQ (YOU ARE HERE)
Your blog’s ranking on Google or Bing can spell the difference between success and failure.
My.ComMetrics helps getting better engagement, placing higher in search result – SEO and reaching your target audience.
Use these data to improve your blog’s performance, such as blog content going viral, being shared more often on Facebook or Twitter and supporting your sales funnel better.
Get the latest updates about BlogRank.CyTRAP.eu first – sign-up for our newsletter (irregular publication – 6 to 12 weeks – we publish only if we have something to say)
FAQ – click link – get answer
Please take a few minutes and check out the answers below.
- How do I get updates about BlogRank.CyTRAP.eu?
- How can I add a blog?
- How can I remove my blog?
- Do you use a toolbar to collect your data?
- I have noticed a problem/discontinuity in the BlogRank.CyTRAP.eu data.
- What social networks do you track?
- I have a question about my BlogRank account.
- How did My.ComMetrics come about?
- BLOGS: What blogs do you track?
- BLOGS: Is it possible for you to show the top ranked blogs?
- BLOGS: Can I suggest a new blog My.ComMetrics should track?
- BLOGS: Do you adjust your blog data in case of URL changes?
- BLOGS: Do you bundle some blogs with others in your stats?
- DATA: What methodology is used to calculate the ComMetrics Footprint?
- DATA: What is the My.ComMetric sample size per country/region, type of blog?
- DATA: Can I use My.ComMetrics data for my blog, website, paper, project or book?
- DATA Is there a way to check if the My.ComMetrics data collection is accurate?
- RANKING: How do you define RANKING VS RATING?
- RANKING: How do you track blogs included in a benchmark (e.g., FT ComMetrics Blog Index)?
- RANKING: How do you calculate the rankings of the FT Blog Index or the Fashion with Passion one?
- RANKING: How often are My.ComMetrics benchmarks and rankings updated?
- RANKING: How do My.ComMetrics rank from other ‘ best blog rankings’?
- STATISTICS: What statistics are provided by My.ComMetrics?
- STATISTICS: How do you calculate stats for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.?
- STATISTICS: Do you publish a more detailed breakdown of the data for each type of measure (e.g., headlines, text complexity)?
- STATISTICS: What do you mean by stats are “subject to quality assurance testing and revision for 24 days from publication”?
- STATISTICS: Are your My.ComMetrics statistics based only on the activity of your members?
- STATISTICS: Why do you not weight your data?
- STATISTICS: Do you provide traffic volume evolution stats per continent/country/language zone/subject/keyword/niche?
- STATISTICS: Can I view information for each country?
- ERROR: My blog should be on the list. Why is it not?
- ERROR: Is there a way to check if the My.ComMetrics data collection is accurate?
- ERROR: Who do I need to contact for an error?
- Can I get more graphics??
======
1. How do I get updates about My.ComMetrics?
You can keep up-to-date with My.ComMetrics in the following ways:
Subscribe to our My.ComMetrics News Feed
Follow My.ComMetrics on Twitter
Or you can visit here and enter your email address to receive email updates
2. How can I add my blog?
You can suggest your blog right here or else register yourself and have us track your blog for free. If you are registered you can then monitor your blog and others…. you get charts and can start to improve your blog’s performance.
3. How can I remove my blog?
Yes you may do so if you are a registered user by just removing the blog from the set of blogs that we trace for you.
4. Do you use a toolbar to collect your data?
No, My.ComMetrics does not use any kind of toolbar to collect data. To find out more about our methodology visit here
5. I have noticed a problem/discontinuity in the My.ComMetrics data
Please let us know what you found by sending us a message here.
6. What social networks do you track?
We started tracking Facebook and Twitter a while back. Like others, we have been waiting for an official Google+ and Pinterest API for some time.
In the meantime, LinkedIn has become so large that we have decided to include it in our social network data.
Note that in the Ripple we use Facebook social sharing Tweets and LinkedIn shares and provide you with raw data as well by calculating the social media score.
PS. If you digg deeper with the social media score you can find out which of your posts get shared more on which network. Sometimes certain kinds of posts are popular share objects for Facebook users while others flop but fly on Myspace. Our data help you to learn what works better for you and adjust your blogging style accordingly.
We are always happy to improve our detection particularly in relation to local/regional social media sites; if you would like to suggest a social media site for us to add to our detection, then please contact us and provide the relevant URL to get their API (please contact us).
7. I have a question about my ComMetrics account.
If you have a general query about your My.ComMetrics account, Please check this FAQ. Otherwise get in touch with us, he Support Desk will be happy to help you. Please make sure to submit a full and to ensure a prompt response.
8. How did My.ComMetrics come about?
My.ComMetrics came about because we decided to publicly share interesting trends that we were monitoring in-house. We literally had a light bulb moment one day when we realised that others might be interested in these blog benchmarks too… so we made an interface and published all the stats for free.
Our methodology is very simple and we’ve purposefully kept it that way – we try to make our ComMetrics Footprint stats as clear and transparent as possible. We appreciate all user queries, comments and suggestions. If you have any questions for us, please don’t hesitate to contact us via our feedback form.
9. BLOGS: What blogs do you track?
We can track any blog you wish to track but we have focused on those from countries where we have clients (e.g., US, UK, DE, AT, CH and IT).
Nevertheless, if you enter 10 sports blogs – such as soccer – from within a country, you can already start with collecting very interesting data that might reveal trends that help you improve. So suggest your blogs and we do the rest for you.
10. BLOGS: Is it possible for you to show the top ranked blogs?
Yes.
Yes you can just visit My.ComMetrics and choose the country you wish to get more information:
http://DrKPI.ch/br// /American Football top blogs
http://DRKPI.ch/br/24/CH/ Swiss fashion blogs
There are other options just select what you are interested in (see above links).
11. BLOGS: Can I suggest a new blog My.ComMetrics should track?
Yes.
You may do so and suggest a blog right here or else register yourself and have us track your blog for free.
12. BLOGS: Do you adjust your blog data in case of URL changes?
Yes.
If you registered yourself for tracking your blog you can add the new URL by just changing the old one.
13. BLOGS: Do you bundle some blogs with others in your stats?
Yes and NO
It is a no because we collected data for each of the blogs in our database and keep those separate. However, it is a yes because to get the rankings, we use each blog’s ratings to calculate its rank in the list (e.g., the same category – sports blogs) and may do so when calculating a group (e.g., American Football blogs or soccer blogs)
14. DATA: What methodology is used to calculate the ComMetrics Footprint?
My.ComMetrics is a blog analytics service. We track more than 2,500 blogs globally. These sites cover various activities and geographic locations.
Every month, we record various data about these sites. For each blog post, we analyse various statistics that we collect.
For our Online Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMMA) stats, we analyze every blog post and social sharing that happens for it. For our content statistics, we analyze every blog entry according to language, headline and so forth.
We summarize all these data to get our ComMetrics Footprint information.
We provide independent, unbiased stats on blog engagement trends. We do not collate our stats with any other information sources. No artificial weightings are used. Aside from those adjustments (e.g., for Facebook Likes – each counts .25 compared to tweets counting 1.0 each), we publish the data as we record it.
In other words we calculate our ComMetrics Footprint per month, for blogs from all over the world.
By collating our data in this way, we track the activity of users to our member blogs.
Hence, how your conversations using microsharing tool(s) compare to other users’ efforts including corporate personae/brands are of interest.
15. DATA: What is the My.ComMetric sample size per country/region, type of blog?
In August 2012, our global sample consisted of over 2,500 blogs. These are primarily located in North America and Europe.
16. DATA: Can I use My.ComMetrics data for my blog, website, paper, project or book?
You certainly can for non-commercial purposes. If you do, however, please provide us with credit and a copyright as ==> © CyTRAP Labs – My.ComMetrics.com and a link to our site.
17. DATA Is there a way to check if the My.ComMetrics data collection is accurate?
This is a difficult question to answer – to be honest, we recommend you consider our methodology in order to make your own decision regarding how accurate our stats are for your purpose. Here is some information to review:
In terms of sample size, we are not aware of any other publicly available service providing market share stats that has a bigger sample size on which they base their information.
We also have a wide global spread of stats and we make our individual country sample sizes publicly available.
From time to time, changes or revisions to our stats may be necessary. We reserve a 14 day window to revise stats. Outside of this, no stats will be restated. Where any revision or significant change is made to our stats, we flag this by way of a note on our graphs.
Please contact us if you have any further questions.
18. RANKING: Ranking team sports and blogs
When one ranks a group of blogs one tries to rank blog A (the object) according to its relative importance to the other objects in the set (e.g., 100 other blogs, 50 football players). Often a rank is an integer assigned from the set {1, 2, …, n}.
The ratings carry more information than the ranks. This happens because they provide us with the degree of relative importance of each object. For instance, how important is a story headline or text complexity of blog posts we benchmark?
We use a ranking model as a method for determining a way in which the ranks are assigned for each blog. Part of our ranking model are such as using a rating for headlines used in blog stories or first impression (how does it look to the reader visiting). Once we have the ratings by sorting the blogs in the descending order of the corresponding ratings we attain our blog ranking.
Applications of rankings we come across in sports where players or teams may be rated and ranked to better understand why some teams do better than others during a season. We apply this concept to blogs.
19. RANKING: How do you track blogs included in a benchmark (e.g., FT ComMetrics Blog Index)?
Membership in a benchmark may change (e.g., FT Global Index lists the 500 largest publicly listed companies – membership may change from year to year). We monitor our benchmarks and adjust membership if need be (e.g., if a blog’s focus is being shift from topic A to B).
20. RANKING: How do you calculate the rankings of the FT Blog Index or the Fashion with Passion one?
The ComMetrics Footprint is calculated by using FIVE indices: Headline Score, Text Complexity Score, First Impressions Score, Online Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMMA) made up of the Ripple Score (Google+, Twitter AND Facebook) and the Engagement/Social Interaction Score.
We calculate the above scores for all blogs in a category (e.g., sports, R&D development) or group (e.g., fashion, insurance blogs) and then rank them accordingly. Simple as that.
21. RANKING: How often are My.ComMetrics benchmarks and rankings updated?
Blog statistics are updated weekly. Please be advised, our statistics What do you mean by stats are “subject to quality assurance testing and revision for 14 days from publication”? for 14 days from the first day of publication.
22. RANKING: How do My.ComMetrics rank from other ‘ best blog rankings’?
What differs is that our algorithms are based on rules and statistics that we describe fully. No secret, no guessing for you. All it takes is time to read our explanations in the e Methodology section.
23. STATISTICS: What statistics are provided by My.ComMetrics?
We provide you with various statistics. You get absolute values – i.e. as recorded by our crawlers – for such things as the social media score (made up of Facebook social sharing Tweets and LinkedIn shares). You can also get absolute values on your personal dashboard about words used on average for each blog post, comments and so forth.
24. STATISTICS: How do you calculate stats for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.?
We collect data for each blog post and use APIs as well as our crawlers to be able to share with you how many tweets or shares on LinkedIn a blog post had.
25. STATISTICS: Do you publish a more detailed breakdown of the data for each type of measure (e.g., headlines, text complexity)?
Yes we do. For this information you have to upgrade at this point. We provide this to our Gold Customers.
26. STATISTICS: What do you mean by stats are “subject to quality assurance testing and revision for 24 days from publication”?
Although we make every effort to ensure that all data and stats are accurate and comprehensive on publication, we reserve the right to correct the stats in respect of any errors/omissions. After the expiration of a 14 day period from first publication, no changes will be made to the data.
27. STATISTICS: Are your My.ComMetrics statistics based only on the activity of your members?
No. Our My.ComMetrics tracks the activity of third parties on our member blogs. This helps to minimizes bias in our data.
28. STATISTICS: Why do you not weight your data?
We do not impose artificial weightings on our stats – this is a conscious and deliberate decision. Weighting stats means that the stats are only as good as the weighting methodology used. If the weighting data is inaccurate or out of date, then it renders the data completely incorrect. Further, applying a weighting factor to inaccurate data does not turn it into meaningful information – no matter what weighting factors are applied, the geographical spread of the initial stats is very important. For these reasons, we choose not to weight our data.
We would also have a significant difficulty in choosing and applying any system of weights to our data. For example, how would we handle changes in the weights? Would we rerun and restate all our prior stats? Would we apply a smoothing factor? How often would we update the weights?
By publishing our data without any adjustment for indicator weighting, we allow our users to re-run the numbers using any weighting system they wish. No weighting system is imposed on them and they are free to take our data and weight it however they wish or not at all. The decision is theirs.
Important!
Please note that if country weighting is used, it should only be applied to worldwide, continental or similar data where stats for several countries are aggregated. Weighting factors are not relevant for individual country stats.
29. STATISTICS: Do you provide traffic volume evolution stats per continent, country, language zone, subject or keyword and niche?
We don’t currently publish statistics on a state basis, however, this suggestion has been logged and is being assessed by our Development Team.
However, we do provide you with stats about the country, blog category and so forth.
30. STATISTICS: Can I view information for each country?
Yes you can just visit My.ComMetrics and choose the country you wish to get more information:
http://DrKPI.ch/br//CH country Switzerland
http://DRKPI.ch/br/24/CH/ Swiss fashion blogs
31. ERROR: My blog should be on the list. Why is it not?
There could be various reasons for why your blog is not on the list. Best is to check as follows:
- Visit here and enter the blog’s URL
- If the system does not suggest that your blog is already included
- Click on suggest and enter more details.
If the blog is already part of the system, please click on the link to see which category the blog was assigned to. If the category is wrong, please , please contact us.
32. ERROR: Is there a way to check if the My.ComMetrics data collection is accurate?
Absolutely. Our detect tool can be used to confirm that our useragent detection is accurate.
If you identify any problems, please let us know ASAP.
In the case of some countries/categories of blogs or regions (e.g. Antarctica) the sample size of page views may not be sufficiently large to be statistically robust. In this case, it is possible that there may be some bias in the data and the graphs may become skewed by a small number of users.
If you remain concerned, please contact us and we will investigate and respond as soon as possible.
33. ERROR: Who do I need to contact for an error?
If you have a problem, see an error message or find something peculiar, please contact us and we will investigate and respond as soon as possible.
34. Can I get more graphics?
If you are logged in to your account you can see graphics for each of the blog’s you let us trace for you. You can get a trendline this year, last years and up to three year’s before to see how your blog and some of those traced. In other words, does the trend show in the right direction?
Source: Frequently Asked Questions about MyComMetrics
Check out our FAQ (you are here) or our Factsheet
The author: This post was written by social media marketing and strategy expert Urs E. Gattiker, who also writes about issues that connect social media with compliance, and thrives on the challenge of measuring how it all affects your bottom line.
His latest book, Social Media Audit: Measure for Impact, was recently published by Springer Science Publishers.
Connect with ComMetrics on Google+ or the author using: Email | Twitter | Google+ | Xing
Pingback: Mashable versus Time: Does BlogRank matter? » How good is your corporate blog, Keywords, You should, You should, sign up for our newsletter, first, First, Second » HowTo.ComMetrics