GEN Summit Masterclass Update: Corrections on Findings

We are all barraged by numbers every day. It is my job, as a data scientist, to ensure that the statistics I report are accurate. The quality and accuracy of Chartbeat data are of utmost importance to me, and these are things I take very seriously. I am proud of the hard work that our team does to ensure that the information we provide to you is as accurate as humanly possible.

Here’s the thing: I made a mistake.  Last week, I presented findings at a GEN Summit Masterclass and after further analysis, I have discovered that several of the numbers that I presented, and which I subsequently blogged about, warrant corrections. I calculated these numbers via a custom data pull and analysis, and there was human error involved.  I have since rerun the analysis, corrected the faulty numbers, and have reposted my Masterclass slides to Slideshare with an intro calling out the changes.

Below are the key corrections:

Socially loyal visits are not greater than directly loyal visits as initially presented.

  • For both the EU and the US, the number of socially loyal visits is only a third of directly loyal visits. If you hold out Dark Social from this number and consider only social traffic with a specified referrer (which you may or may not want to do) the numbers drop to less than 5% for the EU and 10% for the US. That is, socially loyal visits are much, much less common than directly loyal visits.

Mobile visits to an article are still extremely high, but slightly lower than initially presented.

  • Over 70% of mobile visits in the US and over 60% of mobile visits in the EU were to an article. (The previous finding was that 80% of mobile visits in both regions were to articles.)


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