Several weeks ago we added some new charts to your user portal among which include a Post PR Distribution pie chart and a Post Indexing Rate line graph.

Recently we’ve had some questions about why our August post indexing rates were sloping down (we had previously added a help icon to address this very question).  It seems that users were worried that our indexing rate has gone down due to significant member growth, post counts, or whatever else.  Well that simply isn’t true.  If anything our indexing rate is getting better as we continue to make improvements in our system.

Over the last 4 months, our post indexing rate is hovering near 96-97%.  That’s unheard of, especially since so much is out of our control.

But if your indexing rate is so great, as of August 7th why was your indexing rate sloping down so far for August you might ask?  Well good question and let’s get to the heart of the matter.

First of all we only check posts starting 3 days after they are distributed.  So on August 7th, we’re reporting indexing rates for posts made from August 1st – 4th.  Our indexing rate for that time period was right at 50%.  That means 50% of posts were indexed within 3 days.

Secondly, once we check a post for indexing, we might not revisit that post again for another couple of days. It may well be indexed before we check, but it’s not marked in our system as indexed until we check.

Thirdly, we’re always breaking in “new” aged domains into our network and it takes time for these domains to get their indexing rates up.

The real-time data present in these charts was a concern at the outset and we elected full disclosure, but maybe that wasn’t the best approach.  We’ve now modified the charts to show indexing rates with a 2 week delay.  So today on August 7th the charts show the indexing rate for all posts made up till July 24th. And as you’ll see the indexing rate for posts made from July 1st-24th is about 98%.  Not bad huh?