SignalLinks Metadata – More Signal in our API

Late last week we announced that our newest analytic – SignalLinks – had left beta and was rolled out to all justSignal accounts. You can learn more about the SignalLinks analytic here.

Today we wanted to let you know that we’ve added the metadata for SignalLinks to our API.

We generate tons of metadata – or data about the Social Media content we collect – to facilitate our analytics and because we dig statistical analysis. Much of the metadata we generate never appears in our base analytics.

One of the key features of justSignal is our commitment to actually implementing an open data policy. Our open data policy isn’t a paragraph in our Terms of Service, or a vague statement on our site – it is something we consistently implement.

In accordance with that principal we publish every scrap of metadata we generate via our API services. SignalLinks is an excellent example. When we designed the metadata generation for SignalLinks we designed for two key views:

1. Links – Volume data about specific links (how many times was it mentioned).
2. Users – Who is mentioning which links, how often, etc.

The user view has not yet been released as an analytic. When we designed the SignalLinks analytic we realized that the Links view contained so much information that it didn’t make sense to try to cram in Users view – we thought it would be too much and, frankly, a little confusing.

But just because we aren’t using it right now doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be able to you.

The API release today includes both the Links and Users views – every scrap of metadata we are generating.

SignalLinks – Links View

The Links View contains two sets of information:

1. The top (up to) 100 mentioned links
   • Number of Mentions
   • Date (month, day, year)
   • Original URL (probably shortened)
   • End URL (The actual destination URL)
   • Domain (The domain the URL points to i.e., google.com)
2. Links Summary – a summary of the data for all mentioned links.
   • Date (month, day, year)
   • Total number of mentions (content containing a link)
   • Number of distinct links found.
   • Mean number of mentions
   • Median number of mentions
   • Standard Deviation number of mentions

SignalLinks – User View
The User View contains the same two information sets, but organized around the user mentioning the link (not the link itself).

1. The top (up to) 100 users posting links (by number of links posted)
   • Number of times the user mentioned the link.
   • Date (month, day, year)
   • Original URL (probably shortened)
   • End URL (The actual destination URL)
   • Domain (The domain the URL points to i.e., google.com)
   • User
2. Links Summary – a summary of the data for all mentioned links.
   • Date (month, day, year)
   • Total number of mentions (content containing a link)
   • Number of users who mentioned a link.
   • Mean number of times a user mentioned a link.
   • Median number of times a user mentioned a link.
   • Standard Deviation number of times a user mentioned a link.

This is a powerful dataset for analyzing the links found in your Signal. Combining this with information you probably already have (metrics measuring the number of hits on specific landing pages, conversion rates on landing pages, etc) will give you a powerful tool to understand how much the appearance of those links on Social Media sites drives both traffic and conversion.