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Parse.ly is used to track and analyse our website performance and data. The data is used to help identify trends, both live and over time, …
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What is Parse.ly?
Parse.ly is a content optimization platform for online publishers. It provides in-depth analytics and helps maximize the performance of the digital content. It features a dashboard geared for editorial and business staff and an API that can be used…
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- Device and Browser Reporting (5)8.484%
- Pageview Tracking (5)8.181%
- Customizable Dashboards (6)7.777%
- Referral Source Tracking (6)7.676%
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- $499 per month
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What is Parse.ly?
Parse.ly is an analytics platform built for content and designed with the belief that the most successful companies are the ones with the best content. Winning in the digital content world, though, isn't easy. You need to create feedback loops and listen, though data, to what your audience is telling you.
With 30 unique attention metrics, subscriber tracking, and audience segmentation, content creators, analysts, editors, marketers and communications professionals can use Parse.ly to:
Grow their business and improve key metrics like reader engagement, conversions, and retention through data-driven insights.
Act on immediate real-time audience insights or analyze historical data to get a clear picture of the past and plan for the future.
With a built-in personalization platform product teams can use Parse.ly to create dynamic content experiences powered by data and personalized by user on their website and in their CMS or WCM.
With our data pipeline platform data scientists and engineers can use our enriched clickstream data to spend less time on data infrastructure and more time on data analysis and insights.
Parse.ly works with 300+ enterprise companies using their trusted data infrastructure:
The #4 most widely installed premium web technology on high-traffic sites (according to BuiltWith).
Parse.ly is used by leading media and entertainment companies, DTC brands, Fortune 500 companies, B2B enterprise companies, and anyone who believes content can move their business forward.
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Parse.ly Technical Details
| Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
| Mobile Application | Apple iOS, Mobile Web |
Frequently Asked Questions
Parse.ly is a content optimization platform for online publishers. It provides in-depth analytics and helps maximize the performance of the digital content. It features a dashboard geared for editorial and business staff and an API that can be used by a product team to create personalized or contextual experiences on a website.
Parse.ly starts at $499.
Reviewers rate Reporting in real-time highest, with a score of 8.7.
The most common users of Parse.ly are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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March 10, 2024
Great for comparison
Score 7 out of 10
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Verified User
Parse.ly is used to track and analyse our website performance and data. The data is used to help identify trends, both live and over time, which can be used to optimise our website. The software can also be used to generate reports, which for our organisation, is helpful to compare performance over time and across the organisation/individuals. Parse.ly is used across our organisation daily.
- The ability to generate reports that allow individuals and the organisation to compare how articles have performed over time is really helpful. This also means that treads can be easily identified. The reports are also clear and easy to understand.
- Parse.ly is user friendly and easy navigate, particularly when trying to establish the source of traffic to a particular article. It's also helpful that each source is coloured coded, making it easy to see at a glance where the traffic is coming from.
- The graphs that show page views over time are helpful in establishing when is the best time for content to go live.
- It would be good to be able to compare the current day with more than just the previous day on the 'Overview' layout.
- It would also be helpful to drill down via the graphic to see which articles were trending at which times of day. This would be particularly useful out of traditional working hours.
March 01, 2024
Parse.ly tells me what's popular and where it's popular
We use Parse.ly across our digital platforms for assessing how our news stories are performing and how many visitors we are getting to our website. This means we are able to see when stories and articles are becoming popular and then we can make sure they feature higher on our website. We're also able to track where our traffic is coming from to enable us to inform how we put out content in the future and also work out what times are best. My favorite feature is being able to track comments made quoting and linking to pages on our website and finding out what people are saying on Twitter.
- Parse.ly helps us monitor which stories on our website are doing well and helps us track where our traffic comes from.
- Using Parse.ly means we can immediately see when a news story on our website is generating interest and react to that.
- Parse.ly means we can track which website authors are achieving a high number of page clicks and then assess why that may be.
- Parse.ly Makes it easy to show our staff, visitors and external stakeholders just how well we are doing
- Parse.ly Had very good customer support for those times thing go wrong
- I wish you were able to see the level of detail when it comes to FaceBook that you can see when it comes to Twitter.
- I wish I could see multiple websites on one screen, maybe divide my screen into quarters or the like.
- I wish the mobile app was easier to use.
- I wish it was easier to search for authors
February 29, 2024
Intuitive and clean software
We use Pare.ly across editorial and content development departments in order to monitor the performance of online articles and respond accordingly to traffic surges and drops. It's one of many tools we use to garner this kind of data and allows us to easily navigate the hundreds and thousands of articles published across the companies numerous websites. From offering top performing stories and those getting the most traffic in a more granular and of the moment tab 'in the last 10 minutes'. With its intuitive and friendly interface, Parse.ly allows us to dive into articles categorised by tags, as well as authors, and see not only traffic but where that traffic is being referred from e.g. Google, AMP, social networks. All of this gives a better indication of how to respond both to the performance of singular articles and on a wider scale. From updating articles that plummet, to reusing successful strategies in the future.
- Intuitive, easy-to-use interface.
- Home screen displays day's top performances as well as top performing articles in the last 10 minutes.
- The ability to focus in on an article-by-article basis, as well as by tag/section/author etc.
- Referral data could be more detailed and specific.
- Better labeling in graph form/ability to zoom in to traffic spikes/drops.
- Saving last searches.
February 28, 2024
Using Parse.ly to engage our team
We use Parse.ly to keep track of the success of our newspaper website in terms of audience reach and dwell time. It is used daily by the editorial department but also to help our advertising teams discuss online digital advertising sales with clients. It guides our news team on content that is doing well in real-time, helping to inform decisions about what stories to cover in the future. It offers excellent insight into the online performance of both individuals and the title (and its sister publications). We can gauge how we are performing from day to day, week to week, and month to month, enabling us to set targets to help us achieve growth in our online audience. We monitor the sources by which people come to us--such as social media or a Google search--along with the times of day and the type of platform they are using. By setting up reports, we can swiftly inform all team members how we are faring and how their stories are doing, encouraging them to continue posting content that our audience appreciates.
- Real-time audience measurement--Parse.ly helps us understand how many people are on our site now and how this compares to our usual performance. By ensuring we improve on standard performance, we can grow our numbers.
- Reports--setting up automated reports that can be sent to team members enables us to inform them at a glance what stories have performed well. This keeps them engaged and encourages them to post content more likely to perform well.
- Analysis of performances--everyone can access their statistics, encouraging them to improve their reach and dwell time of their stories and better understand what has done well.
- Overview across time--it is easy to compare how you have performed over set periods (e.g., month-on-month or week-on-week), making it easy to set targets for growth.
- A more readily understandable visual guide to a visitor's pathway through your site would help understand what keeps a reader on-site.
- The total page view number for the day should be more readily visible--on the overview page, not just by going to Posts>Historical.
- Maintain the archive for longer than a year under all plans--it's a shame to lose year-on-year data quickly.
February 27, 2024
Passing judgement on Parse.ly
Used entirely across the social aspects of Wireless to see in real time the page views of stories as well as historical data to plan ahead. It allows us to see what is doing well organically and identifies stories that are great to be shared to our partner sites to increase traffic. We also use Parse.ly to record data to provide feedback to editorial about what stories and features we should be writing about.
Its immediate recording of data is hugely beneficial to allow us to react as quickly as we can.
Its immediate recording of data is hugely beneficial to allow us to react as quickly as we can.
- Real-time analysis
- Identifying where traffic for tweets has come from
- Able to break down referrers for each social platform
- Ability to record UTM tracking codes
- To see from which Facebook page a certain story has seen the most traffic
- Breaking down where traffic has come from on Facebook by specific post.
- Integrating images and recording its engagement
We use Parse.ly to help with content optimization and audience engagement. We use the Engaged Time Measurement feature to track user engagement on articles, ensuring that the metrics we collect are accurate and relevant. By understanding which content is resonating with our audience, we can optimize our content creation and distribution strategies.
- Accurate engagement metrics
- User-friendly interface
- Seamless integration with other tools
- Customization options in e.g. reporting
- User management, it's sometimes difficult to control user access to specific metrics/dashboards
- Could be better at tracking engagement on social media
July 13, 2022
Parse.ly is great for real time parsing of data
I use Parse.ly every day at my job. It helps articulate in real-time the traffic on a website that needs to deliver information to its users as fast as possible. I monitor and use the software/website constantly throughout my entire day. I personally use it for a website that sees millions of users every month.
- Delivers real-time feed of website traffic
- Articulates data in a clear and concise manner
- Makes user navigation incredibly easy to pick up with little knowledge or experience
- It doesn't make it easy to examine data from more than 12 months prior
- Its mobile experience could be better for those that might need it in a fast-paced environment
- Sometimes articulates data visually, for a brief few moments, before it's actually in, and overestimates traffic
We use Pare.ly to analyze the real-time interaction with our website, portsmouth.co.uk - to see which stories are attracting the most attention, so we can then capitalize on that, and also to see where that traffic is coming from, ie, Facebook, Twitter, direct to our own site, etc.
- Real-time analysis of how content is performing
- Being able to compare various data sets, ie, days, individual users' content
- Being able to compare performance over time
- Make it easier to access old data
- Is it possible to identify which individual Facebook pages traffic is coming from?
- Improve the search facility - it sometimes brings up odd responses
February 28, 2022
Parse.ly, the way forward for digital content creators
I use Parse.ly as a tool to identify the footfall of readers. The platform allows me to map the behavior of the readers on our platform and understand how and when readers react to stories. It also allows me to adapt to new things or take note of what sort of stories have a wider impact.
- Firstly, the platform is super easy to use, it is user-friendly and easy to navigate through.
- Secondly, the platform also provides you the option to use filters to your best fit and adjust the filters according to what data you want to look at.
- Thirdly, it enables the user to have live feedback on their articles and see what can be improved going forward to address the need of the readers.
- The interface could be more interactive and attractive.
- The views tab could become active in the sense that when you hover the cursor it automatically tells you which days or period the article performed the best.
- If the platform could also provide relative information on the kind of users reading the articles.
November 23, 2021
Parse.ly is an essential tool for the modern newsroom
We use Parse.ly to track the number of page views our news stories and features receive on a daily basis. Parse.ly answers the question of what content works with our audiences, and what times of the day it is best to share it. It is also vital for knowing which channel different users opt to use to consume our content, for example, what is read most via search thanks to SEO.
- Gives accurate real-time insights into how many people are reading a story - as well as which social channel they've used to find it and how the story compares to others [at] that moment.
- Allows an author to keep an exhaustive bank of their stories along with the data behind them, making it easier to make informed choices on which content to create.
- Uses data to place stories in a leaderboard-type format to show the best-performing articles from any given day, week, or month. This helps us create daily and round-up newsletters for our readers based on tried and tested content.
- Page-view data could be more incisive. For example, a drop-down menu inside the Facebook tab which also indicates how many views have come from Facebook Stories, as well as conventional timeline posts.
- With Facebook algorithms constantly changing, it would be useful if Parse.ly was able to liaise with social networks to send out best-practice notes to publishers. For example, which kinds of posts - and post reactions - will lead to content appearing on more people's timelines.
- Expand the data set for page views in the 'Historical' tab beyond a year.
- Integrate newsletter-tracking and subscription conversion data capabilities into the Parse.ly experience as standard.
November 15, 2021
Parse.ly works great for media orgs
Global editorial strategy and planning for an enthusiast media brand, 25 FT employees. We use Parse.ly as our primary point for assessing the performance of our work, how readers are engaging with us, and which headlines are performing well for us, as well as who on our team is producing X no. of stories per period.
- Author breakdown
- Daily "pulse" monitoring
- Traffic sources
- The reporting system is complicated and somewhat confusing to set up, can't edit reports once they're created, have to create new ones
- Identifying "smart" trends in stuff that is/isn't working - we have to do this analysis ourselves
- Breaking down Google traffic sources (Discover is just categorized as "Google")
September 05, 2021
Best in Market For Content Analytics and Getting to Know more about sites pain points to improve.
We use Parse.ly for content analytics, recommendation, trending now, curation, and generating more traffic on [the] entire site. It gives [a] good recommendation on trending now content based on end-user interest. Their best product [is] pages viewed, age time user on the page, visitors on the site, visitor on the site for x time, how many social interactions by the user, how many [users] read the posts.
- Page viewed
- Visitors on the site
- [Average] time visitors [are] on the page
- Social interactions
- New posts read by users
- Overall current traffic on the site
- Reporting
- Metrics
- Dashboard
August 23, 2021
Parse.ly is a solid and dependable tool
We use Parse.ly to track our website traffic to learn more about how people find our website and track their customer journey. Parse.ly provides more detailed, precise, and accurate information than Google Analytics and similar sites. It's used mostly by our editorial department but also by the entire company, including leadership, who like to see how widely our articles are being read, which ones people are reading, and how long people stay on the site.
- Parse.ly has a much sleeker layout than its competitors. Very well designed.
- Parse.ly is easy to navigate, which makes it easier to dig into the data to learn more about its uses: where they came from, how they found you, and how long they stayed.
- Parse.ly has good customer service. They are proactive about helping customers utilize their tools.
- Tracking users by age demographic is something I'd like to see Parse.ly incorporate. (This is one area where Google has an advantage over Parse.ly).
- Parse.ly's app is not available to Android users. I don't like this because I have an Android.
- Tracking page views through third-party publishers (using HTML code) is something Parse.ly can't do for some reason. Our tech people were able to do this easily with Google Analytics, but for some reason (beyond my knowledge), we can't do it with Parse.ly.
August 13, 2021
Parse.ly does exactly what you want it to do
I use Parse.ly daily! Multiple times a day--I always have a tab open. We use it as our main tool to see how our editorial is performing. It is the easiest way for us to look at time spent on articles and parse our content by site sections and tags. This is used heavily by audience development, social, and the editorial analysts.
- Easily group content by tag
- Easily group content by site section
- Accurately count time spent on articles
- Get a general understanding of where traffic is coming from
- I would love to see YTD functionality as a default date setting where you can choose this week, last month, etc.
- If a tag is added after you publish, Parse.ly only counts the traffic after it was added
- Buggy right now--if I click on a post and then adjust the date, it still reflects the metric from the original date set
August 10, 2021
Parse.ly just clicks!
It is used to gauge what stories are resonating with readers and calculate concurrent views, which translates to clicks aka eyes on stories. These numbers allow us to see what articles do well, what we can do more of, and which articles fall flat. Clicks also generate business for the company, a media outlet.
- Real-time reporting
- Easy to use
- Reliable
- Always being refreshed
- Sometimes the format changes so you don’t see the top 20 stories, only say 8 or 10
- Sometimes the history feature is glitchy
- It doesn’t remember you so you always need to click on what you need
Parse.ly is being used across the whole organization. It is used on a weekly basis to track content performance and the bookmarklet tools is used regularly to check the performance of specific articles. It addresses the issues of content monitoring, and provides more data than Google Analytics in terms of engaged minutes and social media referrals with accuracy.
- Easy to segment dashboards based on search terms and over periods of time.
- The ability to click on particular features of the dashboard (eg referrals) to drill down to more data.
- The bookmarklet tool is ideal for quick access to specific pieces.
- Being able to download the graphs from the dashboard rather than just exporting raw data to a CSV file.
- Being able to sort search results by date published.
- Including LinkedIn stats as part of the main dashboard report.
Parse.ly is used across our whole company to track story performance on newspaper websites. It also is used by individual newsrooms, reporters, and photographers to track that same performance. Parse.ly is used to determine page views, referral sources, engagement time, and other metrics important to determine what readers are looking at, how they're getting there, how long they're engaging, and where they go next on the website.
- Parse.ly's ability to show data in virtually real time.
- Parse.ly's breakdown of where website viewers are coming from (social, direct, internal).
- Parse.ly is user friendly and has an easy-to-use interface.
- While Parse.ly provides a breakdown of what social sites viewers are coming from, it's impossible to see the exact referring post/tweet.
- I'd like to be able to see video views on a web page as a percentage of page views.
- Would love to be able to know what Google keywords/searches were part of a search function that got viewers to a particular page.
We use Parse.ly to monitor website metrics for our news departments. It helps us track how well our content is doing with our audience and where that audience is coming, plus when they most want to see new content and when they make time to read more content, which drives our publishing decisions and our content strategy.
- Real-time metrics are great and help us decide what content to follow up on.
- Audience segmenting is key, helps us determine where we're strong and where we're not.
- Historical metrics are also helpful in helping us see what readers come back to overtime, which drives decisions about what content to devote more resources to producing.
- Needs better social tracking, what post/group is generating traffic rather than just which platform.
- Scheduled email reports could provide more context, similar to what's available on a site's landing page.
- The overlay function is very limited and even more temperamental, not a valuable tool.
March 19, 2021
Parse.ly improves our paper
Parse.ly is used by editors and copy editors at my organization to measure analytics on stories we post. We use it to see what coverage of our community is successful and what is not. Without it, we would be unable to tell what our readers are interested in. It is an essential tool for our organization.
- Parse.ly allows you to view analytics over many periods of time. This is helpful when analyzing specific trends over different years.
- Parse.ly's interface is easy to access and use. Though there are many tools available, they are all easy to find and use. This makes both analyzing the data and showing the analysis to others easy.
- Parse.ly allows you to view so many different analytics. Basically anything you could want to analyze is present all in one place, which is very convenient.
- Sometimes there is so much information on one page it can be overwhelming when first learning to use Parse.ly. A simplified tutorial for beginners would be nice.
- It would be nice to get more functionality out of the social breakdown, or to get some data on where the people interacting with articles are (such as what state).
- Those two are really the only critiques I have. Parse.ly is so easy to use and comprehensive.
December 22, 2020
Accurate data in easy-to-use interface
Parse.ly has been used by our editorial, marketing, social media, and advertising teams to understand what type of content and topics are resonating with our readers. It aggregates all audience data in one clean, easy-to-use dashboard that is accessible to both data novices and experts alike.
- Easy to understand and navigate
- Accurate data when compared to other measurements
- Easy reporting
- Interface allows for spotting trends and setting strategy
- Interface can be understood by all stakeholders
- Great customer service and educational materials
- Finding RSS feed / email campaign traffic can be a little more time consuming than finding other traffic sources
- Conversion tracking is a great addition, but legacy customers may find the pricing inaccessible
- Rolling traffic averages on the dashboard are not inaccurate, but do not give the whole picture and can be confusing when viewed by data novices
December 22, 2020
Slick analytics tool for editorial organizations
Parse.ly is used daily by Adweek's editorial, product, and audience development teams to keep their fingers on the pulse of our reader interaction within our publishing website.
- The UI is extremely user friendly.
- To the everyday user, Parse.ly is much easier to use to drill down into traffic by story, author, referral source, etc. than is Google Analytics.
- Live reports can easily be shared among platform users and non-users.
- While Parse.ly is continually evolving the product, all new functionality comes at a premium price when it should be part of the base offering.
December 17, 2020
Parse.ly view, from a publisher
We use Parse.ly across our media business. We started with the Audience team and BI, rolled out to editorial, but it's now the default self-serve analytics tool for many people across all divisions. Parse.ly doesn't necessarily provide data that isn't available elsewhere, but the fact it's designed for publishers and so simple to use means usage is extremely high and frequent, more so than other tools.
- Simplicity and presentation of data
- Real-time analytics
- Designed for publishers
- More event and conversion tracking in real-time
- Improvements to reporting centre
- Make comparative period-on-perios reporting simpler and more effective.
November 23, 2020
Intuitive And Attractive
We use Parse.ly across multiple departments and it is being used to assess page views and traffic patterns of content on our website. We use this information to help craft content we post on the site. I personally generate reports for a team of editors and other management within the company.
- Page views: We look at counts throughout the day, weekly and monthly.
- Traffic source. We look to see where our site visitors come from to view content.
- Comparisons. I find it easy to compare across timelines.
- Traffic source. I would like to be able to find the exact social media page a view comes from. Now I can only tell which platform.
- I would like to be able to compare traffic more than one year ago. Now I'm limited to one year.
- Some more customization of reports (or maybe more training).
June 25, 2020
Parse.ly is a great way to help us track our traffic
We use Parse.ly to monitor live site traffic 24/7 - it's very handy to see as a quick snapshot how the day is tracking. We also read daily summary reports from Parse.ly looking at how each article performed and where the audience was coming from (direct, social, google, news etc).
- Easy to read statistics.
- Clean, functional layout.
- I like the live 'worm' that moves up and down during the day.
- The URLs that list where some traffic came from (i.e. Twitter) are sometimes hard to read.
- It would be great to see more detail of traffic sources. For example, if a spike of views come from Twitter it would be great to see if it is a specific tweet or account the bulk of views are coming from.
January 23, 2020
I'd like to see the Parse.ly analytics for this review, because Parse.ly makes finding it out worthwhile
Parse.ly is used by our newsroom to track analytics for stories and reporters. It allows us to see peak times during a day and week when our audience visits the website. It allows us to track the reach of individual stories across time. And it all allows us to see how the number and reach of stories produced by individual journalists.
- The UI is very intuitive and easy to pick up.
- The analytics are accurate in real-time, allowing us to quickly to react to well or under-performing stories.
- Having more information about where links have been shared within a social media platform would be useful (Twitter handles, specific Facebook pages, etc.).
- The UI could afford to be a little more 'cluttered', presenting disparate data sets without needing to scroll down.