Joe Beaulaurier’s Blog

This week we rolled out a new product package and unveiled our revamped distribution statistics module that provides bigger and better ways to look at press release distribution statistics while also providing additional data.

The first thing people notice about the new distribution statistics is the beautiful and intuitive graphs. Then they notice the increased slicing and dicing of the data into much finer levels. For those using the new Media Visibility product, they can even export the information as XML or CSV files or, better yet, as professionally prepared and customizable PDF documents to provide to their clients or management. Then there’s the ability to compare your releases with each other and with industry target averages. This latter feature is, to me, of huge importance since it is the best use for this data - learning what strategies do better than others.

This overhaul provided a much needed opportunity to revisit the collection of distribution statistics. Some significant house-cleaning was accomplished as a result. There is a lot on the PRWeb platform that has remained the same for years; distribution statistics reporting being of that group. Two significant changes will help our users rethink their use of our distribution numbers and terminology.

First, what we were calling “reads” and “estimated pickups” are now more accurately labeled “headline impressions” and “full page reads.” Those old labels had always bothered me and I’m really glad to see them gone.

Second, the collection methods used before attempted to reflect activity beyond our reach. Although incredible algorithms were created to accomplish this, over time we saw them as contributing less and less to the information. PRWeb’s new distribution statistics include only raw numbers collected from within our realm of influence (more sources are being reported than before).

The end result of all this is a new press release distribution statistics module with more detail, more sources of information, more ways to see the data and more ways to distribute the data.

It’s all pretty kewl.

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