Parse.ly Frequently Asked Questions

Parse.ly is part of WordPress VIP, the platform that combines the ease and flexibility of WordPress—the CMS that runs 43% of the web—with unmatched scalability and security for the enterprise. VIP Content Analytics by Parse.ly refers to WordPress VIP’s analytics functionality, including the Parse.ly dashboard, Content API, Data Pipeline, and Content Helper.

There are three primary ways that companies integrate Parse.ly. Each involve the same basic steps:

• Adding the Parse.ly tracker to all pages on your site that you want to track.
• Including metadata in one of our recognized formats on all site pages you want to track.

Based on your CMS, we use one of three integration approaches to get our solution up and running. The differences come down to how many people need to be involved, and who those people need to be.

1. WordPress plugin integration—requires minimal coding and developer involvement; in most cases, none at all. A user with WordPress admin access can handle everything. 
2. Basic integration—requires at least one dedicated developer. 
3. Tag integration—requires hybrid involvement from a developer and an end-user, e.g., a marketer, editor, or content manager. 

The data in the analytics dashboard comes from the Parse.ly Tracker—a small piece of tracking code added to your site (during the first integration step). The tracker is a line of JavaScript that monitors user actions and relays them to our analytics servers. The easiest way to install the Parse.ly Tracker is with the WordPress Parse.ly Plugin. This plugin installs the tracking code throughout your site and automatically collects metadata (the second integration step).

Metadata enables deep content analysis. In the analytics dashboard, it allows you to use filters, generate reports, and customize the overview screen. 

You can set up metadata to flow into the dashboard via JSON-LD, repeated meta tags, or a combination. 

• JSON-LD—following open standards and schemas, you can also use this script tag for other services (such as Google, for enhanced display in search listings).
• Repeated meta tags—if your CMS can provide page information as meta tags in the page header, then this might be a better option.

And if you’re using the WordPress Parse.ly Plugin, just enter your Site ID. We’ll automatically pull your metadata straight from WordPress.

We’ll detect and update it for you.Alongside the in-app feature that lets you check for metadata updates yourself, Parse.ly offers a backend system for customers that detects metadata changes automatically on your website. If we find data that’s changed, we update the metadata on that page to reflect the changes in your analytics dashboard.

UTM parameters power the campaign tracking feature for measuring and optimizing the performance of digital marketing campaigns (newsletters, content syndication, push notifications, etc.). 

This feature shows you content performance data in five categories that correspond with your campaigns’ UTM parameters: Campaign, Medium, Source, Content, and Term. 

1. Campaign: Why is traffic going here? 
2. Medium: How did traffic get here? From which marketing channel?
3. Source: Where did traffic come from?
4. Content: What did people click to get here? 
5. Term: What did people search for to get here?

If you’re consistent with UTM parameters throughout campaigns, you’ll understand how your audience interacts with your campaigns, what content resonates the most, and where there are opportunities for improvement.

Some content is intended for single-page visits: recipes, ‌landing pages, single-page websites, or pages used for informational research. Those will naturally have a high bounce rate, but that doesn’t mean visitors don’t find the content valuable.

What visitors do while on a page is more important. How much time are they spending there? Are they scrolling? Clicking? Is their mouse moving? Are they highlighting text? Those movements offer more insight into the value of your content.That’s why, instead of bounce rate, Parse.ly measures engaged time and recirculation rate—the aggregate time visitors spend interacting with your content and the percentage of traffic that goes deeper into your site (rather than exit right away).

To comply with personal information restrictions, as well as privacy policies of individual publishers, Parse.ly processes a very limited amount of personal information (PII). It also includes a feature to anonymize IP addresses collected from visitors to monitored domains and applications.

Parse.ly collects the following standard web browser information about a reader:

• IP address: used for bot detection and geographic segments
• User agent: used for device analytics (mobile vs. desktop)
• Anonymous identifier: used for loyalty analytics (new vs. returning users)
• Browsing history: used for content personalization

If you’re curious about the PII of the broader VIP platform, learn more here.

Parse.ly doesn’t have specific ecommerce features built into the platform, such as the ability to capture purchase revenue. Instead, we focus on content performance and audience engagement. However, Parse.ly does track conversions and conversion rate, which can be applied to revenue-related events like purchases and subscriptions. These conversion events are the crucial link between content and revenue.

A conversion is the completion of a desired action by a customer or visitor on a website—making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, filling out a contact form—that aligns with marketing objectives of the business.

Conversion tracking helps your team see when and where conversions occur throughout your site, tracking the content journey that leads visitors to convert. Parse.ly offers four attribution models for assigning “credit” to conversions: 

1. First Touch: the page seen first in the 30 days before conversion
2. Linear: every page that was seen before conversion (including where the conversion occurred)
3. Last Touch: the page where conversion occurred
4. Last Post Touched: the last post seen before conversion occurred

Conversion Rate shows what percentage of pageviews convert on a specific page or post for Last-Touch conversion models. 

There are a few ways to set up conversion tracking—the easiest is using our GTM conversion tracking tag. 

In all cases, you may either set them up yourself or request Support to do most of the work. Support-managed conversions are easier for teams with few technical resources. Self-managed conversions let you implement conversions the way you want. 

No. But you can create and track your own metrics with the Data Pipeline. 

Say you have a metric or calculation you want to track alongside the rest of the data that Parse.ly collects. 

Maybe your north star metric isn’t just one metric, but a combination, like this example: [metric = 0.25*scroll_depth + 0.25*engaged_time + 0.25*recirculation_rate + 0.25*conversion].

To track this custom metric, use the Data Pipeline to access a raw feed of your Parse.ly data and route it into a data visualization tool along with that custom metric.

No. But you can add Parse.ly data to a data visualization tool via the Data Pipeline along with data from another source to create custom aggregate dashboards.

The Data Pipeline is a fast and easy way to build in-house analytics atop flexible, clean, accessible, and real-time user interaction data. With it, turn any website or mobile app into a data stream of rich user interaction data—and in minutes, not months.

When users interact with your business online, they generate user interaction data. Parse.ly measures and collects all this data, and you can access and work with it however you want via the Data Pipeline. The Data Pipeline also has a robust infrastructure for instrumenting your own user interactions, otherwise known as custom events.

The data formats developed for the Data Pipeline are especially easy for Python, R, Spark, Redshift, and BigQuery to work with. We also have standard integration schemas and recipes so that the data can be used in ad-hoc querying and dashboarding tools, such as Looker, Periscope, and Tableau.

The Content API leverages natural language processing, AI, and all the unique metadata collected to make highly sophisticated and customizable content recommendations that enrich readers’ on-site experience.

It also provides complete access to the real-time data collected through the analytics dashboard, which includes traffic and social data on articles, authors, sections, referral sources, and topics discussed in the content.

Brands and publishers use the Content API to populate personalized content recommendation widgets, newsletters, homepages, infinite scroll features, and more. For WordPress users, a pre-built WordPress block lets you quickly add those personalized content recommendations to any post.

The Content API features multiple endpoints that can be called to retrieve data from the system.

• Analytics
  Returns a list of posts, authors, sections, tags, or channels depending on query parameters.
• Conversions (beta)
  Addresses two use cases: First, to download detailed URL-level conversion metrics for ad-hoc analysis. Second, to provide a top-converting content module on your site containing a list of URLs, filtered by metadata, and ranked by conversion metrics.
• Exclude
  Manages a list of URLs that should be excluded from the results of all other API endpoints.
• Metadata
  Updates the metadata for a post or video (depending on the specified metadata type) using the received metadata dictionary.
• Partners
  Provides a means for partners to programmatically create and list Site IDs (apikeys) for their customers.
• Recommendations
  The endpoints on this page are designed to be used in-browser (called via JavaScript), so no API secret is necessary.
• Referrers
  Returns a list of the top referrers for a referrer type.
• Search
  Searches for posts by keyword or query. These can match against full content.
• Shares
  Retrieves a listing of top posts by social shares across top social networks.
• Top 10 or Top 25
  Returns today’s top posts or videos. This endpoint was designed to be a lightweight and fast way to access top content lists without exposing your API secret or actual metric values.

Parse.ly offers different ways to segment your audience in the dashboard, so you can focus on a subset of users while also maintaining a view for your entire audience. Set up segments based on geography, user status (e.g., subscriber, anonymous user), campaigns, and more. 

Regardless which option you choose, setting up Audience Segments in Parse.ly starts with understanding your target audience segments and mapping them to your business objectives. 

Geographical audience segments can be set up immediately, without development work simply by specifying the desired geographic areas to be tracked. To set up other types of audience segments, follow the custom setup process laid out in our documentation. These are the basic steps:

1. Select your segments of interest
2. Email them to Support with basic information
3. We update your dashboard(s) per your specification
4. Your developers do final setup and testing

Google Analytics is great for tracking AdWords spend, and we encourage our customers to use it for that. But it’s not built for measuring content data or serving the needs of content teams. 

Parse.ly is.

Google Analytics requires much training to use effectively—most writers, content marketers, editors, and executives simply don’t have the time. Parse.ly, on the other hand, is much more user-friendly and easier to learn. As a result, we’ve found that content teams using it increase data usage by 581%. 

The lack of meaningful real-time data in Google Analytics creates a blindspot for many content teams. Parse.ly provides a robust, real-time view of content performance so that you can quickly react to what’s working, understand why, and find tactics to maximize the impact.

It’s possible to look deeper than pageviews with Google Analytics, but its cumbersome interface makes that a real challenge. Parse.ly makes working with data easy for creators and marketers, giving them the insights they need to focus their content strategy and prove ROI.