Showing posts with label Google Plus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Google Plus. Show all posts

Monday, June 2, 2014

Big social platform shares - added Stumble Upon likes, shares, lists

And another script to check for social shares...this time more details around stumble upon (no, not really active there, anymore, although it has led me to a few outstanding sites).  The older version of this script pulls stumble data, but this shows pageviews from stumblers, not amplification through stumble activities. So this was mixing traffic data with engagement data - fixed now.



The data for stumble is pulled in two steps - first get the badge ID for the url, and with that pull the data (likes, shares, lists) for it. They all go into just one variable below, tab delimited, and then per echo into the larger list. That's why there are not 3 fields immediately visible when adding the data, but just seemingly one.


echo -e "Url\tripples\tFB-comments\tFB-shares\tFB-likes\ttwitter\tlinkedin\tstumble_likes\tstumble_shares\tstumble_lists" > "${1}-all-social-shares".csv
while read -r shortline ;
 do
This line is to replace special characters with their html encoding...
line=$(echo $shortline | sed -e 's/\?/\%3F/g' -e 's/&/\%26/g' -e 's/#/\%23/g')
gpull="https://plus.google.com/ripple/details?url=${line}"
ripples=$(wget -qO- "${gpull}" | grep -o "[0-9]*\s*public\s*shares.<" | sed "s/[^0-9]//g"  | tr "\n" "\t" | sed 's/\thttp/\nhttp/g'| sed 's/\t//')
commentpull="https://api.facebook.com/method/fql.query?query=select%20comment_count%20from%20link_stat%20where%20url=%22${line}%22&format=json"
comment_count=`wget -qO- $commentpull | sed -e 's/^.*://g' -e 's/\}//g' -e 's/\(]\)//g'`
echo "comment count: " $comment_count
sharepull="https://api.facebook.com/method/fql.query?query=select%20share_count%20from%20link_stat%20where%20url=%22${line}%22&format=json"
share_count=`wget -qO- $sharepull | sed -e 's/^.*://g' -e 's/\}//g' -e 's/\(]\)//g'`
echo "share count: " $share_count
likepull="https://api.facebook.com/method/fql.query?query=select%20like_count%20from%20link_stat%20where%20url=%22${line}%22&format=json"
like_count=`wget -qO- $likepull | sed -e 's/^.*://g' -e 's/\}//g' -e 's/\(]\)//g'`
echo "like count: " $like_count
twitterpull="http://urls.api.twitter.com/1/urls/count.json?url=${line}&callback=twttr.receiveCount"
twitternumber=$(wget -qO- "${twitterpull}"  | grep -o 'count\":[0-9]*\,' | sed -e 's/count//g' -e 's/,//g' -e 's/://g' -e 's/"//g' )
echo "twitter: " $twitternumber
linkedpull="http://www.linkedin.com/countserv/count/share?format=json&url=${line}" #echo ${linkedpull}
linkednumber=$(wget -qO- "${linkedpull}" | grep -o 'count\":[0-9]*\,' | sed -e 's/count//g' -e 's/,//g' -e 's/://g' -e 's/"//g' )
echo "linkedin count: " $linkednumber
stumblepull=`wget -qO- "http://www.stumbleupon.com/services/1.01/badge.getinfo?url=${line}" | grep -o "publicid.*views" | sed -e "s/publicid//" -e "s/\":\"//" -e "s/\",\"views//"`echo $stumblepullstumblenumber=$(wget -qO- "http://www.stumbleupon.com/content/${stumblepull}" | grep "mark>" | sed -e "s/^.*\">//" -e "s/<.*$//" -e "2d" -e "4d" -e "6d" | tr "\n" "\t")

echo -e "${line}\t${ripples}\t${comment_count}\t${share_count}\t${like_count}\t${twitternumber}\t${linkednumber}\t${stumblenumber}" >> "${1}-all-social-shares".csv
done < $1 
cat -A "${1}-all-social-shares".csv

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Script to check social shares: Facebook comments, shares and likes, tweets, G+ ripples, linkedin and stumbles


Social shares on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Google Plus are relevant - for users, and we assume as well for rankings in search engines. (likely not directly, but indirectly through user behavior). There's a post checking a few platforms - now with more than ever! %-)

This is the version I use most - it covers the biggest relevant platforms (here in the US), and pulls it in the right speed. With my current internet connection, it just pulls slowly enough to not trigger any blocks from the api-s.

I also realized it is easiest to use a random file name, rather than pulling some info in from the site scanned. The url list can come from a sitemap scan or from a sitescan - or any other url list.

This is how the results look like:


I usually sort by each column, to filter out 'outliers', and then use the results.

This is the script:

#!bash
# set all variables to zero at the beginnning! then value >, replace
# check where the tabs come from (likely one tab to many in one of the echos?
rm "${1}-all-social-shares".csv

echo -e "Url\tripples\tFB-comments\tFB-shares\tFB-likes\ttwitter\tstumble_upon\tlinkedin" > "${1}-all-social-shares".csv
while read -r shortline ;

 do
line=$(echo $shortline | sed -e 's/\?/\%3F/g' -e 's/&/\%26/g' -e 's/#/\%23/g')
echo $shortline
echo $line
 number=0
 re='[0-9]+'
gpull="https://plus.google.com/ripple/details?url=${line}"
ripples=$(wget -qO- "${gpull}" | grep -o "[0-9]*\s*public\s*shares.<" | sed "s/[^0-9]//g"  | tr "\n" "\t" | sed 's/\thttp/\nhttp/g'| sed 's/\t//')

commentpull="https://api.facebook.com/method/fql.query?query=select%20comment_count%20from%20link_stat%20where%20url=%22${line}%22&format=json"
comment_count=`wget -qO- $commentpull | sed -e 's/^.*://g' -e 's/\}//g' -e 's/\(]\)//g'`

sharepull="https://api.facebook.com/method/fql.query?query=select%20share_count%20from%20link_stat%20where%20url=%22${line}%22&format=json"
share_count=`wget -qO- $sharepull | sed -e 's/^.*://g' -e 's/\}//g' -e 's/\(]\)//g'`

likepull="https://api.facebook.com/method/fql.query?query=select%20like_count%20from%20link_stat%20where%20url=%22${line}%22&format=json"
like_count=`wget -qO- $likepull | sed -e 's/^.*://g' -e 's/\}//g' -e 's/\(]\)//g'`

twitterpull="http://urls.api.twitter.com/1/urls/count.json?url=${line}&callback=twttr.receiveCount"
twitternumber=$(wget -qO- "${twitterpull}"  | grep -o 'count\":[0-9]*\,' | sed -e 's/count//g' -e 's/,//g' -e 's/://g' -e 's/"//g' )

stumblepull="http://www.stumbleupon.com/services/1.01/badge.getinfo?url=${line}"
stumblenumber=$(wget -qO- "${stumblepull}" | grep -o 'views\":[0-9]*\,' | sed -e 's/views//g' -e 's/,//g' -e 's/://g' -e 's/"//g' )

linkedpull="http://www.linkedin.com/countserv/count/share?format=json&url=${line}" #echo ${linkedpull}
linkednumber=$(wget -qO- "${linkedpull}" | grep -o 'count\":[0-9]*\,' | sed -e 's/count//g' -e 's/,//g' -e 's/://g' -e 's/"//g' )

#echo -e "$line\t$value\t$comment_count\t$share_count\t$like_count" >> "$1-all-public-shares".txt
echo -e "${line}\t${ripples}\t${comment_count}\t${share_count}\t${like_count}\t${twitternumber}\t${stumblenumber}\t${linkednumber}" >> "${1}-all-social-shares".csv


done < $1



Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Public shares on Google Plus: Moz.com with impressive strategy

What an excellent strategy to run a community with top level specialist on your main domain!

While we all should know that this kind of guest blog is highly valuable, I did not expect the extent of impact. Guests write their posts and under certain settings they are 'promoted' to the front page of the blog. Moz offers us a tool to take a closer look - a sitemap of blogposts (moz.com/blog-sitemap.xml).

Just to get an idea how relevant this is, I used my ripple script to check how many ripples each of these posts has accumulated. (Ripples being public shares on Google Plus). This has the usual limitations, it is just like a screenshot at a certain moment and angle.

Total shares of the urls in the sitemap: 26,584. Wow!
Even the Google homepage currently has only 8283 ripples. The highest ranking posts are "Google plus correlations" with 980 ripples, and "ranking factors 2013" with 633 ripples.

That's a LOT of social links and activity to add to a domain!

moz blog ripples

Google Home ripples

Thursday, August 1, 2013

How to optimize your Google Plus post for high CTR in notifications

Google plus brought in top designers to get the tech company to appealing design, and now see one example of what's come out of it: Notifications. 

Here is a picture of some random notifications I got when writing this post, lets take a closer look.


G+ notifications
What does each tile show me? 

1. Face or logo
That's great, if I know the person or company well enough. Favoring big brands - personal and companies.

2. Name and 'Shared a post' 
Shared a post once on the flap might be good, but on each tile?

3. Copy
Looks like it is showing the first ~ 45 to 50 characters of a post or if no copy is in the post it shows where it is coming from.


This being the notifications I see to alert me of new posts, the picture / logo can be used branding, and the first 50 characters can be used to convert to a click through. 
This seems to be fairly similar to the browser title for pages - 'frontload' your post with a relevant keyword and call to action, to capture attention and get a click through. 

Apart from this optimization aspect, I hope that Google will integrate more info into each box - for example swapping for the superfluous 'shared a link'. Would be great to see any of these or a combination:

  • Topic category
  • one of the new wonderful auto-hashtags
  • a bit more copy 
  • the number of +1 or comments on the post.
Each of these would help me decide which of the hundreds of post are worth checking out. Now that would be great design to have it in there and not look cramped. 

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Google Plus links count as backlinks

There is an ongoing discussion on Social Media and SEO. Currently promoting the synergies of these at Dell, no wonder there are some insights.

One of the common questions is:

Does Social media have an influence on natural search rankings - Answer: Yes

And there are several ways I can 'prove' that. So the question many still ask - correlation or causation, can be answered: Both!

First things first, let me show you one screen which proves the connection. Do you use Google webmaster tools? For SEO folks, that's a standard. And in that tool are backlink reports. As backlinks are considered to have one of the strongest influences on rankings, it is a standard for seo to look at these.

This is how you get there:
On the following page, select 'download latest' links from others to your site.
And then search in the results for plus.google.com as the referring url:


Voila! Clear proof that Google sees these links just as regular backlinks and tracks them in GWT.
Like with many other links, it is not possible to see HOW MUCH influence one link has - and it is not for lack of trying - but I would consider this enough  of a proof that it does count for search engine results page rankings.

Google shows these since roughly a year I would say. Now my hope would be, that Google easily and quickly identifies Google Plus Link spammers and discredits their links, but I doubt they are there already.

As shown in profile - I work for Dell and we have a rather large site with the according number of backlinks from Google Plus and many other sites.

Would you count this as proof that social influences search rankings?
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