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FAQs
Find out more about BlogPulse in our Frequently Asked Questions.
General
 What
is a blog?
What
is BlogPulse?
What
can BlogPulse do for me?
What
is blog?
According to the Wikipedia entry
for blog, "A
weblog, or simply a blog, is a website which contains periodic, reverse chronologically
ordered posts on a common webpage."
What
is BlogPulse?
BlogPulse is an automated trend discovery system for blogs. Blogs, a term
that is short for weblogs, represent the fastest-growing medium of personal
publishing and the newest method of individual expression and opinion on
the Internet. BlogPulse applies machine-learning and natural-language processing
techniques to discover trends in the highly dynamic world of blogs. BlogPulse
is brought to you by Nielsen BuzzMetrics.
What
can BlogPulse do for me?
BlogPulse.com is a blog search engine that also analyzes and reports on daily
activity in the blogosphere. BlogPulse.com features the following:
- A Search
Engine for blogs
- A set of Buzz-Tracking tools that are applied to blog content
daily to track blog activity on key issues, people, news
stories, news sources, bloggers and more
- A fun look at real-world Trends as reflected through
blogs
- Daily blog stats that measure activity in the world
of blogging (number of blogs identified, new blogs
created, number of blog
posts analyzed)
- A Trend Search that allows you to create trend
charts comparing buzz in the blogosphere on up to three
specific topics
- A Conversation Tracker that follows and captures
the discussion, or conversation, that emanates and
spreads from individual
blogs or individual blog posts
- Blogger Profiles that identify top-ranked
blogs and analyze their blog presence, activity
and relative influence
in the blogging world
- A Showcase, which we think of as a virtual sandbox
where our researchers bring you some of the coolest
new ideas,
tools and
gadgets for blogging
If you are a blogger …
- You can ensure that your blog is represented in
our index
- Try our search engine to see who is talking about topics
of interest to you and to find out who links to your blog actively
through other bloggers' own blog entries, and in what context
- Check out our Buzz-Tracking and Featured Trends tools to see what's current or "bursty" (meaning
it bursts onto the discussion scene) in the blogging world
on any given day
- Use our Trend Search to chart buzz on specific
topics of your interest. You can also use the Trend Tool
to chart
links to specific blog posts, blogs or web sites over time
- Use our Conversation Tracker to map the flow of
the conversation on specific topics across the blogosphere
- Visit our Blog Profile section to see if you
rank among the top bloggers or to determine the relative
activity
and influence of other bloggers.
If you are a web surfer …
- Try our blog search
engine to seek
out and compare bloggers' opinions on various topics of interest.
This search engine is specific to blogs
and doesn't mix in other general content on the World Wide
Web
- Check out our Buzz-Tracking and Featured Trends tools to
see what's top of mind in the blogging world on any given
day. Add
the BlogPulse RSSFeeds to your RSS Reader to get your
daily summary of the blogosphere
- Visit our Conversation Tracker to see how discussions
are sprouting and spread in the blogosphere
- Chart the buzz on specific topics of your interest using
our Trend Search tool
- Check out Blogger Profiles to get a sense of
who's who in the world of blogging
If you are a journalist, writer, analyst or researcher …
- You will come to love our blog
search engine. It is a one-stop portal for finding out what bloggers
are saying on topics of interest to you or on your beat. We
did not scrimp on our search engine's capabilities — you'll
find it quite powerful to meet your searching needs!
- Perhaps you want to find out the latest, greatest memes
and trends in the blogosphere — you've come to the right
place. Check
out our daily Buzz-Tracking stats and Featured
Trends.
- Want to know if a certain blog or blog posting is being
discussed or creating waves? Use Conversation Tracker to follow
the conversation threads.
- Use the Blog Profiles section to figure out
if a specific blogger is active or not, influential or
not,
perhaps
worth interviewing or contacting on a specific topic
or issue.
- You have a hypothesis you are pursuing and are looking
for quick, add-water-and-stir tools to confirm your
thinking. Check
out the latest selection of tools in our Showcase — we
promise that it will be worth your visit.
- Let your graphics department know about BlogPulse's
ability to create Trend Graphs, visually
appealing charts
that track buzz on any topic you want. Use these
graphs to enhance your story or to hammer home a point.
We'd love
to hear from you about how BlogPulse helps you.
We'd love it even more if you would share with us your
thoughts and ideas on how to make BlogPulse even
more useful. Send
us your Feedback.
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Search
What
does BlogPulse search?
How
many Blogs are out there? How many Blogs does BlogPulse search?
How
do I search BlogPulse?
Does
BlogPulse search the entire post or just a summary?
What
does BlogPulse search?
BlogPulse searches content posted on weblogs, or blogs. BlogPulse is NOT
a general World Wide Web search engine. Users can search by link (URL), keyword,
phrase, boolean query, and date range.
How
many Blogs are out there? How many Blogs does BlogPulse search?
Today's Internet hosts millions of blogs. The actual number varies depending
on the source or the research on which the estimate is based. As of July
2004, BlogPulse locates content from more than 14 million blogs and indexes
them on a regular
basis.
BlogPulse updates its stats on the number of blogs right on the home
page (top right corner).
How
do I search BlogPulse?
The BlogPulse search
engine uses a simple interface that is similar to the
interfaces used by most Web search engines, such as Google or Yahoo! Simply
enter your search terms to locate blog entries containing those words. Click
on Search Help if you want to know more about specific search features available
on BlogPulse. When your search is complete, BlogPulse also offers a one-click
function to create a trend graph of your search results, to receive RSS feeds
for the search, to track conversation from the results or to view that blogger's
profile.
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Indexing
How
do I submit my blog to BlogPulse?
What
does it cost to add my blog to BlogPulse?
How
frequently does BlogPulse index my blog?
How
do I submit my blog for indexing by BlogPulse?
Please use our Submit
blog form. Remember, BlogPulse is a blog-only search
engine. Please don't spam it with URLs to general web sites or other resources.
Spamming our blog submission process costs us a lot of time and resources,
and prevents us from offering a high-quality, free service to the public.
What
does it cost to add my blog to BlogPulse?
At this time, you can add your blog to be indexed by BlogPulse for free.
How
frequently does BlogPulse index my blog?
At this time, BlogPulse will visit your blog at most once a day. Check here (the
BlogPulse FAQ’s) next time you visit BlogPulse for any opt-in indexing
plans we might offer in the coming months that include more frequent updating.
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Analysis
How
does BlogPulse analyze the blog data?
What
is the "Top Blog Posts" feature?
What
is the "Top Blogs" feature?
What
is the "Top News Stories" feature?
What
is the "Top News Sources" feature?
What
is the "Top Links" feature?
What
is the "Key People" feature?
What
is the "Key Phrases" feature?
What
is the "BlogBites" feature?
Can
I get the daily BlogPulse Analysis via RSS?
How
does BlogPulse analyze the blog data?
BlogPulse creates a full-text search index of all of the blog entries it
finds every day. You can search this index through the BlogPulse search
engine.
Additionally, BlogPulse analyzes the blog
data in a number of interesting ways. These methods reveal the
most cited links and key people that are referred
to daily in blog entries.
BlogPulse also performs a unique kind of
text mining on blog data to help reveal topics and themes within
blog entries every day. These findings
are presented to you in the form of key phrases and BlogBites.
What is the "Top Blog Posts" feature?
Top
Blog Posts are the individual posts, or entries,
that other bloggers are linking to most on any particular day.
What is the "Top Blogs" feature?
Top
Blogs are the blogs that other blog authors are
linking to most on a given day.
What is the "Top News
Stories" feature?
Bloggers often provide links to news stories as part of their
commentaries and opinions. Top
News Stories lists
the news stories that bloggers are linking to the most on any
particular day as the seeds of their discussion.
What is the "Top News
Sources" feature?
Bloggers rely heavily on mainstream media for news coverage
and for the topics, personalities, issues and events that they
write
about. Top
News Sources lists the major established news sources
(TV networks, online news web sites, newspapers, magazines,
etc.) that bloggers are linking to the most in their posts
on any particular
day.
What
is the "Top Links" feature?
Top
Links are the most cited or most popular links appearing in
blog entries daily. Top Links can give you an idea of sources,
stories and themes that have occupied the attention of bloggers
on any given day.
What
is the "Key People" feature?
Key People represents the most
prominently featured people across blog entries daily.
The "Leaders" table showcases persons with the most
overall citations on a given day, comparing the "rank" of
each with the previous day. The "Bursty" table showcases
persons who are the biggest movers or suddenly noteworthy—an
indication of potentially new people who’ve entered the
mindsets of bloggers (as in "bursting onto the scene today…").
What
is the "Key Phrases" feature?
Key Phrases is a set of bursty
phrases discovered in blog entries on a given day—an
indication of the topics being blogged on that day. Key Phrases
are automatically mined from blog entries every day through
proprietary text mining techniques.
What
is the "BlogBites" feature?
BlogBites showcases a blog
entry for each key theme that’s automatically discovered
during the daily indexing of blog entries. BlogBites intends
to capture and present a daily snapshot of top stories from
the world of blogs.
Can
I get the daily BlogPulse Analysis via RSS?
Yes! Here are the links to the RSS feeds:
 BlogPulse™ Newswire
BlogPulse™ Spotlight
Top
Links
Top
Blog Posts
Top
Blogs
Top
News Stories
Top
News Sources
Key
People
BlogBites
Key
Phrases
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Trends
What
are BlogPulse Trends?
These
trend graphs are really cool. Can I suggest topics for creating
new trend graphs?
Can
I create BlogPulse Trend graphs on my own?
Can
I publish BlogPulse Trend graphs on my blog, in a news/magazine
article, in a research paper or text book, etc.?
What is BlogPulse Live?
What
are BlogPulse Trends?
BlogPulse
Featured Trends are graphs that identify in one
click the topics and subjects that people are talking about
in their blogs. Is it the latest political scandal? International
struggle? A TV show? A new electronics gadget or computer
operating system? A particular movie star or sports celebrity?
A famous court case or a bizarre news story of the day?
A BlogPulse Trend uses a simple trend graph
to display the buzz generated by any given topic or the comparison
of buzz
across a set of topics. You can also create a trend graph
from your BlogPulse search results by clicking on the "Trend
This" icon that appears when your results are displayed.
These
trend graphs are really cool. Can I suggest topics for creating
new trend graphs?
We think these BlogPulse Trend graphs are cool, too! Please give
us your input on topics for creating trend graphs. We can't promise that we can incorporate
all your suggestions, but we will certainly do our best to showcase your
ideas.
Can
I create BlogPulse Trend graphs on my own?
There are two easy ways to create your own trend graphs. One way is to create
a trend graph off of a regular search by clicking on the "Trend
this search icon" on your search results page. Trend Search is also accessible in our BlogPulse
Tools section. Trend search has proven to be one of BlogPulse's
most popular features. We'd love to hear from you what you think!
Can
I publish BlogPulse Trend graphs on my blog, in a news/magazine
article, in a research paper or text book, etc.?
We are happy to hear that these BlogPulse Trend graphs can support a story
or article or paper you may be authoring. You may reproduce the entire BlogPulse
Trend graph only in its entirety (including any copyright, trademarks and
watermarks that may be present in the graph/picture). Please provide in
the accompanying text or in an explanatory cutline the appropriate attribution
to our BlogPulse service for the trend graph, as well as the link to our
web site (http://www.blogpulse.com/).
If you have special requests for graphs or
images, please send us an email, and we'll be happy to talk to
you and see how we can accommodate your needs.
What is BlogPulse Live?
BlogPulse Live provides a real-time view of the most popular topics that
bloggers are writing about, updated by the minute and presented as a percentage
of all blog posts. The numbers across the top represent Eastern Time. BlogPulse
Live captures new blog entries as they’re published. Text-mining and text-analysis
technologies then categorize the posts into key subject areas, such as "Diaries" (personal journals), "Politics," "Movies/TV," "Technology," "Sports," "Health," "Religion," "Meme," "Food" and more. The scale is logarithmic; the only way to feature all of the trends
in a single graph is via a logarithmic scale of absolute counts.
Check back frequently to see how blog discussion changes from minute to
minute, hour to hour or in reaction to major news events.
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Showcase
What
is the BlogPulse Showcase?
How
can I collaborate with you in the same way to showcase some cool
capabilities?
Do
you have a BlogPulse API?
What
is the BlogPulse Showcase?
We are constantly innovating and producing new and cool tools and technologies.
The BlogPulse Showcase is a sandbox for our researchers,
developers and collaborators. This is where we offer an early peek into new
and cool things related to blogs, blog searching, blog analysis and more.
Check here frequently for new toys and tools for your use.
Your
BlogPulse Showcase features some capabilities built by others.
How can I collaborate with you in the same way to showcase
some cool capabilities?
We actively collaborate with researchers and developers on a wide range of
activities. The BlogPulse Showcase features work
we’ve done with other firms. If you have specific research or development
ideas for collaborating with us, please send us an
email. A team member will contact you shortly to listen to your thoughts
and determine any follow-up.
One obvious note of caution: Please don’t send any confidential
or proprietary information to us—we cannot be responsible
for receiving any material we didn’t ask for.
Do
you have a BlogPulse API?
At this time, we have some mechanisms in place to work with our collaborators.
A formal API is forthcoming. Please write to us about
your interest or need from a BlogPulse API.
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BlogPulse Blogs
Why does BlogPulse feature its own blogs?
What
is the BlogPulse Newswire?
What
is the BlogPulse Spotlight?
How
frequently do you update the BlogPulse Blogs?
Why
does BlogPulse feature its own blogs?
Like millions of bloggers
out there, Nielsen BuzzMetrics has added blogs to the BlogPulse.com
interface. We know that users love our buzz-tracking tools,
but the blogs are a way for us to quickly summarize what's
happening in the blogosphere for users who want a quick overview.
Besides, if we're in the business of analyzing blogs, we figure
we should walk the walk, right? The blogs keep you updated
on recent trends, issues, events, personalities and hot topics
among bloggers.
What is the BlogPulse Newswire?
BlogPulse™ Newswire is the general overview blog that takes
a look every weekday at what's happening in the blogosphere
and
reports on major trends, shifts, events and personalities.
It also provides information on service updates to BlogPulse,
new
features, new collaborations, BlogPulse news and other tidbits.
What is the BlogPulse Spotlight?
BlogPulse™ Spotlight is a specialty blog that focuses entirely
on entertainment news: celebrities, movies, music, publishing,
gossip and more.
How frequently do you update the BlogPulse
blogs?
We try to provide weekday updates of the blogs.
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Profiles
What
are BlogPulse Profiles?
How are BlogProfiles determined? What kinds of data do you use
to develop a blogger's profile?
How
do you determine blog rankings? (For example, what are top-ranked
blogs and how do you define "top"?)
Why are profiles of blogs important? Who cares?
The data in my blog's profile is incorrect or incomplete. How can
I have it corrected?
Can I modify my blog's profile with additional information that
I can give you?
Can I display my blog's rank information on my blog?
What
are BlogPulse Profiles?
BlogPulse
Profiles is a tool
we created to answer the very simple question: "Who are these bloggers, how prolific are they, and is anybody paying attention?"
Each profile contains basic information about a specific blog:
its title, its URL/link, its rank (based on citations by other
bloggers),
how frequently the blog author posts new information and other
data points. Many Internet users are still feeling their way
around the
blogging universe, and we hope that providing profiles of blogs
and their authors will help everyone get a sense of what
bloggers are writing about, which blogs are getting more attention
and traffic,
which have the potential to be influential, and what other sources
of information bloggers use to present their opinions, thoughts
and insights.
How are Profiles determined? What kinds of data
do you use to develop a blogger's profile?
Profiles are automatically generated and updated
daily through analysis of the blog's posts and the citations
to the blog from the rest of the blogosphere over time.
In the Overview section of a blog's profile, we
provide a link to the blog and show its citation count over the
past 30 days. Next, we rank the given blog based on the citations
it receives in the blogosphere. A blog's rank is based on a moving
average
of
its citation counts over the past 30 days. We also showcase the
rank trend for the blog over the past 30 days as well.
In addition to the Overview data, each blog profile
also contain tabs that provide one-click access to other key metrics:
- Posts: A list of the blog's most recent posts
(by date and summary), including representative keywords from
the blog in the past 30-days
- Citations: The
blog's most recent citations (by date, blog rank and summary)
- Trends: Two
graphs that visually track the blog's posting behavior and
citation counts over time
- Sources: A
list of information sources used by the blog in recent posts,
including news sources, blogs other
web sites, video
links, etc.
- Neighborhood: What
other blogs are similar to a given blog? To aid in the serendipitous
discovery of blogs
that may be
interesting, BlogPulse lists up to 10 other blogs
that cite links and text that
are similar to the profiled blog.
How do you determine blog rankings?
We rank a given blog based on the citations it receives in the
blogosphere. A blog's rank is based on a moving average of its citation counts over the past 30 days.
Why
are profiles of blogs important? Who cares?
Blogging is a fairly
recent phenomenon, but in a very short time, blogs have quickly
emerged as new sources of information
on a variety of front — news, politics, sports, marketing,
corporate awareness, brand and product information, family/parenting
issues,
entertainment and more. Profiling blogs can help professionals
in a variety of disciplines answer very basic questions: Who
are the influential bloggers for specific issues, companies or
brands? Are other
Internet users
paying attention to some bloggers more than others? Is a particular
bloggers' rank rising or sinking, and if so, why?
The data in my blog's profile is incorrect or
incomplete. How can I have it corrected?
The BlogPulse Profile
feature is still in beta release (testing), and we are aware
of some limitations or shortcomings
with this feature.
Here are some examples of the types of issues that
you may encounter:
- Sometimes, we may not have a blog in
our database. If this is the case with your blog, please submit
your blog
using this feedback form
- On occasion, we may have a blog in our database, but due
to some technical difficulties, we may not have been successful
in
gathering and indexing the posts from the blog. If you
are not seeing some or all of the blog posts in the Profile
of your blog, please
let us know and we'll get back to you to resolve
the problem
- We rank only the top 10,000 blogs and
update their ranks and profiles every day. It is possible
that your blog
should have have been ranked in the top 10,000 but
isn't. If you think that this is the case with your blog, please write to us
We want the Profiles tool to be useful and
reliable for you. We are eager to know your thoughts on what we can do to make it better.
Can I modify my blog's profile with additional
information that I can give you?
We plan to add the capability to
let you modify your profile shortly. Please send us your thoughts in this regard.
Can I link to my BlogPulse Profile, or display
my blog's rank information on my blog?
Yes! You can link to the
BlogPulse Profile for your blog.
You can also display your blog's rank information
on your blog, but there is a small challenge with doing so
at this time. Your blog's rank will fluctuate from day to day.
We plan to add a small tool that you can use to place the most
current rank (or other information from your Profile)
directly
onto your blog, without any heavy lifting on your end. If
you have some thoughts or ideas about this kind of feature, please
let us
know.
Contact
/ Feedback / Other
Who
is the creator of BlogPulse?
Do
you accept ads on BlogPulse?
What
is your Privacy Policy?
How
can I contact you?
How
can I give you feedback on your service?
Who
is the creator of BlogPulse?
BlogPulse is a technology showcase of Nielsen BuzzMetrics.
Do
you accept ads on BlogPulse?
At this time, BlogPulse.com doesn’t accept or feature any ads.
What
is your Privacy Policy?
Please take a look at our Privacy
Policy here
How
can I contact you?
Use our feedback
form and someone will get back to you shortly.
How
can I give you feedback on your service?
We greatly appreciate you taking the time to send us your ideas and suggestions.
Please submit your feedback here.
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