Facebook & it's New Metric Demystification

Do you  ever wondered why you can have 500 odd friends on Facebook friends list, yet only 15-20 show up in your news feed..? It’s not that those other friends have stopped using Facebook; chances are they’re still there. It’s just that they aren’t showing up in your news feed.

If you haven’t noticed, there are now two settings on your Facebook news feed: “Most Recent” which shows most of the content published by your Facebook friends in chronological order and “Top News” which filters content based on EdgeRank.

Edge Rank is the new metrics which Facebook has recently unveiled that allows us to monitor Shares and Clicks. Shares are a very important aspect of EdgeRank. You may not realize it, but News Feed only displays a subset of the stories generated by your friends — if it displayed everything, there’s a good chance you’d be overwhelmed. Developers are always trying to make sure their sites and apps are publishing stories that make the cut, which has led to the concept of “News Feed Optimization”, and their success is dictated by EdgeRank.

Facebook looks at everything published as “objects.” These can be status updates, links, photos, video or anything else that can be shared on Facebook. Every object receives a ranking (EdgeRank), which determines if it will show in your personal newsfeed. Objects with a high EdgeRank appear in your “Top News” feed. Objects with a low EdgeRank will not.

Let’s take a closer look at the three factors that determine EdgeRank.

News Feed Optimization (NFO),

EdgeRank = ∑u_e w_e d_e

u_e = Affinity score between the Viewing User and the Edge Creator.

w_e = Weight of this Edge type (Likes, Comments, tag etc..,)

d_e = Time Decay Factor based on how long ago the edge was created.

Affinity is dependent on a user’s relationship with an object in the news feed.

Weight is determined by the type of object, such as a photo/video/link/etc.

Time Decay, as an object gets older, the lower the value.

So how will you get High EdgeRank Score..????

Here we go the following lists factors that determine ranking of items in news feeds or could influence news feed ranking on Facebook.

ELEMENT	TOPIC	Description
Fresh news and activities	Recency	Recency of activity (news, tags, comments, likes, link clicks.
The type of content	Content	Status updates, photos, videos, comments
Who has published the content item	Author	It may be a person, a page, a group, an application. Each will have its own authority and affinity.
Comments from friends	Engagement (EDGE)	The greater the number of comments from friends, the more likely that a story will appear.
Likes	Engagement (EDGE)	Counts could be used, particularly those made recently, possibly calibrated on the basis of the authority of who has done the liking and / or the rate of liking.
Clicks on links, if present	Engagement (EDGE)	Facebook tracks all links to external sites. It is easy to imagine that this data is used as news feed item ranking signal.
Personal Behavior history	Engagement (EDGE)	A user has historically shown greater interest in news by a certain author or of a certain type.

Something else you should know about is the lifecycle of Facebook “news”. No piece of news will last forever. Unlike ranking on Google where you have an unlimited life span, Facebook news is sort of limiting. As users constantly update their profiles and post new content, it has to be seen. Pretty much all Facebook content is displayed in the news feed. There is just no way of keeping yourself “in the news”. However, you can definitely increase the life span of a certain piece of news which you would like to have by simply using the factors above and by Engagement especially which I explained above.

In my next post will dicuss few more on the stuff required to attain high EgdeRank and factors need to do in Optimizing our NFO (News Feed Optimization).

Your suggestions and feedback are most welcome...!!!!

Steering Clear with Common Terminologies...

The rise of technologies has made dramatic changes on how people live especially in the area of communications. As the technology rapidly grows, the way we interact with people also rapidly changes.

Any idea....?????


These are the most predominant terminologies and the metrics involved in the Web Analytics. After going through the below post it will be clear...

A metric can apply to three different Universe...

Aggregate - Total Site Traffic for a defined period of time.

Segmented - A Subset of the site traffic for a defined period of time, filtered in some way to gain greater analytical insight.  e.g., by campaign (e-mail, banner, PPC, affiliate), by visitor type (new vs. returning, repeat buyers, high value), by referrer.

Individual - Activity if a Single Web Visitor for a defined period of time.

There are three types of Web analytics metrics – counts, ratios, and KPIs:

• Count — the most basic unit of measure; a single number, not a ratio. Often a whole number

 (Visits = 12,398), but not necessarily (Total Sales= $52,126.37.).

• Ratio — typically, a count divided by a count, although a ratio can use either a count or a ratio in the numerator or denominator. (An example of a ratio fabricated from ratios is “Stickiness.”) Usually, it is not a whole number. Because it’s a ratio, “per” is typically in the name, such as “Page Views per Visit.” A ratio’s definition defines the ratio itself, as well as any underlying metrics.

• KPI (Key Performance Indicator) — while a KPI can be either a count or a ratio, it is frequently a ratio. While basic counts and ratios can be used by all Website types, a KPI is infused with business strategy — hence the term, “Key” — and therefore the set of appropriate KPIs typically differs between site and process types.

A fourth type of definition is included for terms that describe concepts instead of numbers...

• Dimension - A general source of data that can be used to define various types of segments or counts and represents a fundamental dimension of visitor behavior or site dynamics. Some examples are event and referrer. They can be  interpreted the same as counts above, but typically they must be further qualified or segmented to be of actual interest. Therefore these define a more general class of metrics and represent a dimension of data that can be associated with each individual visitor.

List of Basic Terminologies and Metrics

 

Page

A web page is a document that is created in html that shows up on the Internet when you type in, or go to the web page’s address.

 

Page Views

 

The units of measurement for usage of the service. A page view is used when the UTM is executed on a web page accessed by a visitor, and processed as part of a profile. A view will be incurred for each instance of the UTM on the web page, and for each profile receiving information from the UTM for such web page.

 

Page View per Visit

Calculated by the number of Page Views / Visits in the same reporting period.

 

Visitors:

• Unique Visitors

Represents the number of unduplicated (counted only once) visitors to your website over the course of a specified time period. A unique visitor is determined using cookies; the first time someone visits your site, a first party persistent cookie is set in their browser. This cookie lasts any where from several months to several years. Each time that person visits your site that cookie identifies them as the same browser.

• New vs. Returning Visitors

When somebody visits your site for the first time, the visit is categorized as ‘visit from a new visitor.’ If this user has browsed your website before, the visit is categorized as ‘visit from a returning visitor.’ In other words, absolute unique visitors counts visitors, whereas new vs. returning counts by  visit type.

• Repeat Visitors

A repeat visitor is the number of unique visitors with activity consisting of two or more visits to a site during a reporting period.

             e.g., 655 visits – 520 visitors = 135 repeat visitors, or about 20%

 

 

Visit Duration

Visit duration is the length of time in a visit. Calculation is typically the time of the last activity in the session minus the time of the first activity of the session. When there is only one piece of activity in a session (a single-page or single event visit), no visit duration is typically reported.

 

Bounce Rate

The percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page is a bounce rate. You can use this metric to measure visit quality – a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages are not relevant to your visitors.

Entry Page

The first page in the visit or session is the entry page.

Landing Page

A page intended to identify the beginning of the user experience resulting from a defined marketing effort.

 

Exit Page

An exit page is the last page on a site accessed during a visit, signifying the end of a visit or session.

 

Visit Duration

The Length of time in a session. Calculation is typically the timestamp of the last activity in the session minus the timestamp of the first activity of the session.

Referrer

The referrer is the page URL that originally generated the request for the current page view or object.

Internal Referrer

The internal referrer is a page URL that is internal to the website or a web-property within the website as defined by the user.

External Referrer

The external referrer is a page URL where the traffic is external or outside of the website or a web-property defined by the user.

Search Referrer

The search referrer is an internal or external referrer for which the URL has been generated by a search function.

Visit Referrer

The visit referrer is the first referrer in a session, whether internal, external or null.

Original Referrer

The original referrer is the first referrer in a visitor's first session, whether internal, external or null.

Operating System (“OS”)

The software that communicates with computer hardware on the most basic level. The operating system is what allocates memory, processes tasks, accesses disks and peripherals, and serves as the user interface.

 

Web Browser

Or simply a browser, is a software program used to locate and display web pages. The most commonly used are Internet Explorer, Mozilla FireFox, and Netscape Navigator.

 

Demographics

Demographics are the characteristics of human population and population segments, especially when used to identify consumer markets.

             e.g., age, sex, ethnicity, religion, and income.

Traffic:

• Referral Traffic

A report that allows you to see which domains (and pages in those domains) are referring traffic to your site, how much traffic they’re referring, which landing pages are the most popular referral destinations, and the extent to which those referred visitors interact with your site.

• Direct Traffic

Direct traffic is a report that allows you see which of your URLs are the most popular destinations for direct traffic: which URLs people can easily remember (google.com), which addresses appear most often in auto-completion, or which of your pages are bookmarked the most.

• Search Traffic

Search traffic: Organic traffic can come from an unpaid search engine results link, a referral from another website (such as a blog) and direct traffic. There is also paid traffic, which can come from AdWords, paid search engine keywords, or paid ad campaigns from non-AdWords providers.

Click-through Rate/Ratio

The number of click-through for a specific link divided by the number of times that link was viewed.

Page Views Per Visit

The number of page views in a reporting period divided by number of visits in the same reporting period.

Events

Any logged or recorded action that has a specific date and time assigned to it by either the browser or server.

Conversion

A visitor completing a target action. Conversions provide a general framework for segmenting visits or visitors and attributing various marketing activity and visitor actions to these segments.

These are of the most common terminologies & the metric terms used in Analyzing and optimizing a Website..