Together, with all other things being equal (ie. two products which equally match a search query), these measures help us to rank products and surface the 'best' content for specifiers.
Our simple theory is that good quality, popular product listings will best meet the needs of our users and provide them with the best experience.
How is Popularity Calculated?
'Popularity' is a bit of an abstract concept, which can mean different things in different contexts.
In the context of your products listed on SpecifiedBy, popularity looks at all the user interactions with a product listing for the previous 3 months and adds these up to create the 'Popularity Score'.
(Note: Not all interactions are equal - for example, someone downloading one of your files carries more weight than someone who viewed your product.)
So each product has its own Popularity Score and the average of the scores for all of your products creates your overall Popularity Score, as displayed on your Insights page.
Won't This Benefit Companies Who Have Been Listed for
Our popularity score calculations run on a rolling 3 month basis. This means that on any given day, we look back 3 months to calculate the Popularity Scores, so these are updated every day.
This means that companies who were popular a year ago have no advantage over companies who are more popular today.
For new customers, this does mean that there can be a bit of a lag in the first 2-3 months whilst you build up some history, but generally, most are not adversely impacted by this.
How Can I Improve My Popularity Score?
There are some simple ways to try to increase your popularity score. The first and most important is by having good Quality Scores and making sure you are using the tools provided to you to increase your exposure on SpecifiedBy - doing this will increase your exposure, which in turn increases your popularity score.
You may also consider letting your existing customers and subscribers know that you are listed on SpecifiedBy so that they may browse and engage with your content and help accelerate your popularity measure.
You could do this via your email newsletter, social media, your company blog and/or by providing a link from your website to your SpecifiedBy listing.