San Francisco — There is no secret that Facebook’s social plugins have been a raging success. In fact, it scattered across 2.5 millions websites, the plugins have become an important driver of traffic, particularly for publishers. And today, the popular social media networking giant Facebook announced the release of a new version of real-time Insights for Websites, providing webmasters with more information about how people are interacting with their site.
The latest version of Facebook Insights presents comprehensive performance data on “like” buttons including impressions, referrals and demographics. Just last month, Facebook made a move to push all third-party sites to use the “like” button instead of the “share” button and it looks like it was all leading to this new update.
“The updated analytics tool helps website operators better comprehend what visitors are interacting with so they can optimize site content and keep people coming back for more,” a representative for Facebook said in a statement.
The new release of Insights also demonstrates as to how many people viewed your “like” button on your website, and how many clicked and and conversely, how many people went from your Facebook page to your website. They also provide the same data for the “comment box” option.
Facebook has also elaborated the data it revealed around the most popular pages, which it states will give people inspiration about the best ways to engage with “fans”. It has also started to provide demographic data, including age, gender, country and language.
Alex Himel, an engineer at Facebook, says on the Facebook Developers blog: “For the first time, you can now access real-time analytics to optimize “Like” buttons across both your site and on Facebook. We use anonymized data to display the number of times people saw Like buttons, clicked Like buttons, saw Like stories on Facebook, and clicked Like stories to visit your website.”
Analytics for your site’s Like Button, Comments Box, Popular Pages, Organic Sharing and Demographics are all now on offer.
Here is a run down of the new features:
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Like Button Analytics: For the first time, you can now access real-time analytics to optimize Like buttons across both your site and on Facebook.
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Comments Box Analytics: The new comments analytics show the number of times people saw Comments Boxes, left comments, saw comment stories on Facebook, and clicked to see the content on your site.
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Popular Pages: Shows you the top 100 pages that people are liking, commenting on, and sharing.
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Demographics: Demographics for gender, age range, country, and language for the visitors interacting on your site.
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Organic Sharing: This is useful for those that haven’t even installed the social plugins. With Organic Sharing you can see how people are sharing links to your site in status updates and Wall posts. You do however need to claim access.
Furthermore, to make sure that everyone will come over to the dark side, Facebook has added an option for those who are not using an official Facebook plugin. Site owners can visit the Insights for Websites page, get access to the data for their site and view the “organic” shares they get by people posting links to stories on their updates and walls.
Interestingly, the move comes at a time when a lot of website owners are looking for ways to decrease their dependence on Google (and search in general). Facebook is certainly one of the more important sources of potential traffic and engagement. For more details, visit the Facebook Developer’s Blog.