EdgeRank and Graph Rank Defined
Facebook has two algorithms that are important to marketers and developers but are largely misunderstood by people across industries.
Graph Rank and EdgeRank are what the social network uses to organize the massive amount of activity generated by people, pages and apps and to decide what stories to show whom. Graph Rank applies to Open Graph applications, not page posts or friend’s status updates. Those are affected by EdgeRank, which determines what shows up in your News Feed. Neither of these is a global score. Every bit of activity on the site has a different rank for different users. And because time and affinity plays a role, the rank of each object is not constant.
EdgeRank is the algorithm that determines what items populate your News Feed. With all the friends people have and pages they like, most users would be overwhelmed to see all of the activity generated by these connections. Facebook, therefore, assigns a value to every possible story that could end up in the feed. This value is based on affinity, weight and time. Affinity is the relationship between the user and the page or friend that created an item. Weight is affected by the type of story, for instance, whether it is a photo upload or a comment on another person’s status. Facebook tends to value rich media content and often when it introduces something new like Questions, it temporarily weights activity from that feature higher. The third factor affecting EdgeRank is how recently an action was taken.
These factors are why you might see every check-in and linked shared by your best friend, but only see whole photo albums from someone else. EdgeRank is also the reason most fans don’t see every post from pages they like. The more users interact with the page, however, the greater the affinity score becomes and the more likely they are to see page posts in the future.
Graph Rank is a new algorithm Facebook is using to determine how Open Graph application activity will be distributed through News Feed, Ticker and Timeline. Graph Rank was introduced at F8 with the announcement of a new type of app that can continuously publish user activity to Ticker and Timeline. Because Facebook expects a proliferation of sharing through these Open Graph apps, it developed a system to manage the amount and type of activity that each user will see. Graph Rank seeks to show users highly relevant application stories based on the other connections they’ve made on Facebook. So if a user plays Words With Friends, they are more likely to see a friend’s story about another word game than a story about an arcade shooter.
This seems to be a reaction to the negative feedback Facebook received after first allowing third-party apps on the platform. Many users were frustrated with the amount of app activity that filled their feeds. The social network initially responded by cutting off several viral channels that allowed apps to grow organically. This left a sour taste in the mouths of many developers. With Graph Rank, Facebook hopes to strike a balance that helps users discover apps they are likely to enjoy without compromising the site or turning off developers.
Together, EdgeRank and Graph Rank help personalize Facebook for each user. Marketers and developers who understand the way the platform ranks content can find ways to optimize their efforts there.
Images from http://www.livestream.com/f8conference and http://www.livestream.com/f8live.
Most analytical tools examine and analyze your Page's historical data to provide analysis and recommendations. EdgeRank Checker is able to analyze industry-wide anonymous aggregate data to provide a wider spectrum of Recommendations!
With Industry Report, we've anonymized and aggregated each industry type to help provide further insight into what is working across the board. This will enable users to examine optimal post frequency, best content type, optimal times of day, and much more within their shared industry.
Your Page is stacked up against your industry and measured against industry benchmarks.
Industry averages including post frequency, post type, and time of day
Post Grading
Post Grading provides Facebook marketers an opportunity to deeply analyze each individual post to see how they can improve their success in the future. With Post Grading, each individual Facebook post will be graded from A to F. Post Grading offers an additional layer of granularity that is often lacking in social media.
Compared to the previous month's data, find out how well your posts are doing. We look at 8 specific aspects of your post performance, including:
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Post Grading analyzes each individual post you publish on your Facebook Page. Each individual post is given a simple grade ranging from a A to F.Page Recommendations
Massive amounts of data does not result in success. Actionable steps based on data drive success. We provide actionable steps in our Recommendations section. Let us help you find the following:
- How often to update
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Each of these answers typically change over the course of a week. Check out what works best on Wednesdays as opposed to Sundays!
Recommendations include how often to post, post type, and what time of day for each day of the weekHow do I get an advantage?
Learn how and when your audience likes to engage with your brand. Begin the discovery of optimizing your content to discover how effective you can be with your social media marketing strategy.
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More than just a score
A score is just the beginning of optimizing your presence for EdgeRank. Start examining how to post and when to post to maximize your exposure on the news feed.
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- Most effective day of the week
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