PostRank ranks online content based upon social engagement (how much readers are interacting with the content by commenting, sharing, responding, bookmarking, etc.). PostRank provides ranking services, blog discover, data services and also analytics. I’ve had the PostRank plug-in installed for awhile and use it to see how individual posts are doing as well as see what the top posts are. PostRank Analytics is a paid service ($9/mo or $99/year) which integrates with Google Analytics to provide an overall picture of how well your audience is engaging with your content. I decided to give it a try to see what type information it was able to provide that I wasn’t getting through the plug-in.
At-A-Glance
From the dashboard, you can track up to 5 sites (maybe more with different packages) and see the average pageviews, engagement & twitter followers for the past 7 days (you assign a Twitter username to each site – although you could just use the same Twitter account for all the sites). Once you click into a site, you’ll also see graphs of the Pageview & Engagement activity over the past 30 days along with links to daily engagement reports.
Engagement
Engagement is how often readers are interacting with your content. PostRank assigns points for different types of interactions (like a Tweet is only 7 points but a comment seems to be 10). It also uses these points to assign a PostRank to every post. The plug-in only shows you the PostRank, but the Analytics shows you were the interactions were and links to them. That’s nice information to have.
Events
Another nice bit of information are Engagement Events – or when users interacted with your content which is tied to pageviews so you can see if the interacts lead to more traffic. These are displayed on a graph over time. This could be useful for figuring out what times of day make sense to post.
Integration with Google Analytics
Once you tie your site in with Google Analytics, you’ll also be able to see pageviews, bounce rate & average viewing time for each post – which are nice to know when you’re evaluating the effectiveness of that post.
Missing Interactions
Both the PostRank plug-in and the Analytics seemed to be missing interactions. Many times it would count my own tweets as interactions (which is fine), but it wouldn’t consistently count them for every post. There were posts which only had a comment listed for engagement points, but when you drilled into the post, you’d see 4-5 tweets listed under conversation. It also would count comments which were really Disqus (my comment plug-in) linking to a Tweet – but not all the time. It also wouldn’t always count when someone else tweeted my content, which I know happened more often then what I was seeing in the statistics for the past 30 days.
Gaming the PostRank
It is possible that PostRank is working on their algorithms to prevent people from gaming the ranking – this may be why there’s inconsistency in my interactions. But it also looks like you can post comments on your own posts and get some interaction points. Why would you do this? PostRank is used as part of the Advertising Age’s Power 150 blogs – if you can artificially inflate your PostRank by interacting with your own content, you can get a higher ranking.
Interesting But Not Worth The Dough
Maybe PostRank was having issues lately with their data and that’s why I’m not seeing all my interactions. I’m simply not impressed enough with the available information to be worth $9/mo (and I was really willing to shell that out if the data was useful). My main issue is the inconsistency in interactions/engagement. If that’s not accurate, then most of the information is available to me for free through the plugin and Google Analytics. If they’re able to fix the problem, I may give it a try again – there really isn’t single place to measure engagement otherwise.
What Do You Think?
Have your tried PostRank Analytics? Are you seeing consistent results? Do you like the information/value for the price?
Liked this post? Consider subscribing to Sazbean.com through RSS feed or by email or following us on Twitter.
Technorati tags: PostRank, social media, analytics, marketing, social networking, business
{ 6 comments }
Hi Sarah — Thanks for the review. Always helps my job when other folks assist with the education process. (Plus, real, live users have more credibility.)
Some details:
- At present we just have the one package, so all accounts can track up to five sites. We're certainly willing to consider expanding so bigger packages with more tracking if there's a demand, though.
- Twitter's a bit problematic, and something we're continuing to work on (hence missed tweets). If/until a full data pipe is available from them, we run into rate limits. We've recently made some system upgrades that should help in the mean time, though.
- We're currently investigating an issue with Disqus that we think relates to some upgrades on their part. We're hoping to get that sorted shortly.
- We don't filter out someone's own comments, as an example, on their sites. We haven't really seen any issues with people trying to game the rankings that way, and, more typically, the publisher's comments are an invaluable part of the comment conversation on a post.
Thanks for your response! I don't think it's a problem that you do count someone's own comments. I think the problem is that the measurement is inconsistent (due to issues with Disqus & Twitter, apparently) – which means that it's difficult for me, as a user, to get valuable information from your service. Perhaps you can schedule updates at off-times if they fail to get around Twitter API issues. I appreciate that you're working to improve your product and are listening to what your customers are saying. Hopefully you'll be able to work things out soon so measurement is consistent and useful.
Oh, believe me, we understand the frustration.
Unfortunately, it's not as simple as scheduling during off-peak times. The limits don't work like bandwidth does. If they did, we'd be all over that. However, we keep poking away at it, and hopefully both issues will get sorted out with the originating apps' help.
I just signed up for a post rank account, and am having problems seeing my twitter stats. I'm not really that impressed with the tool either – and there is hardly any documentation on their site on where they are getting the “engagment” factor.
I'm still having problems with PostRank counting everything (especially Twitter). I use it as a general tool, but it certainly isn't worth paying for – at least not yet. If it did do a good job, I'd consider it. This review was 2 months ago and I'm still having the same issues with comments and Tweets not being counted…. Thanks for your comment.
hi! your review has been very informative and it is a big help on people like me who are interested to use PostRank Analytics but is still thinking if its worth it or not. anyway i just wanna ask if i decided to buy the tool, will i be the one to set what social networking sites should the tool measure? or the tool already has a list of the social networking sites? thanks and more power!
Comments on this entry are closed.