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Understanding What a Hit Is
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| Summary |
Detail |
| Introduction |
Most users can simply enter their home page URL
("widgets.com") in Project setup, using the default "Any
Match". But, when running complex sessions, which may involve sub-pages on
your site, it is helpful to understand what Position Miner considers a positive
match, or hit. |
| Segments |
It is useful, first, to understand that when PM (Position
Miner) analyzes a page, it will break it down into segments. A typical search
engine will throw 10 results per page-some will throw 100, or more. PM will
take the page and break it down into result segments. In the case of a search
engine that does throw 10 results per page, ten segments are created. Once the
segments are created, they are analyzed, sequentially, probing for a URL match.
If one is found, a hit is counted. |
| Scenarios |
Matches, however, can be complicated.
For example; what happens if your URL is "boats.com" and within a
segment "bigboats.com is found"? PM will ignore it, it will not be a
hit. It will recognize the "g" prior to boats and discard the result.
Additionally, it will ignore all upper and lower case letters that occur prior
to the URL. It will also ignore numeric, "-" and "_"
characters. Any other character it finds prior to the URL, PM will recognize as
a hit. The "Any Match" checkbox in the Project Setup, will not
override the above example.
If Any Match is checked you can expect the following to be recorded as hits
when the URL is "boats.com":
| http://boats.com |
| http://www.boats.com |
| http://www.boats.com/index.html |
| http://www.boats.com/resources.html |
| http://www.boats.com/resources/parts.html etc. |
If "Any Match" is unchecked, only the first two in the above example
would record as a hit. |
| Breaking it Down |
So, if you are analyzing your entire site, or significant
parts of it, by creating URLs that include sub-pages, be sure to leave
"Any Match" unchecked.
The conventional wisdom is: if you are simply looking for occurrences of your
site, simply do "boats.com" as the URL with Any Match checked. If you
are looking for data on specific pages, then enter the specific URLs and
uncheck Any Match. Do not do both in the same project. If you want specific
results and general results, then create two projects, otherwise the results
will tend to be very confusing-a chart, for example will show line points
occurring in the same ranking position for boats.com and all of the other URLs,
that start with boats.com, that you entered as sub-pages with "Any
Match" off. |
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