On October 2nd, we released an update for our Interactions counting methodology that increased its accuracy and strengthened our safeguards against bot traffic, which has been found to drive fraudulent interactions.
What is the official date that the data has been updated for my account?
The interaction metric update, fraud protection, and data backfill was released on October 2, 2017.
How far back has my data been backfilled?
Interaction data will be backfilled starting from September 1, 2016.
What is the definition of an "interaction?"
Interactions are defined as any click to a widget or the lightbox. They will only be counted if we verify that the widget had rendered (meaning that it was actually viewable on a user's screen). It includes:
Clicks on arrows on the widget.
New images loaded in a "gallery" type widget
Clicks on "view gallery"
Clicks on "upload your photo"
Using the widget filter
Clicks on an image of the widget to open the lightbox
Clicks on "play" button for videos
Clicks on the arrows of the lighbox
Clicks on "shop this" on the lightbox
Does this mean our old metrics accounted for bots/fraud?
We're constantly evolving our product to improve the accuracy of our metrics and to safeguard against fraudulent interactions. In that same light, preventing bots becomes a similar exercise because they are changing as prevention methods are put in place. When we noticed our interaction metrics being impacted this, we put this change in place.
What are bots?
Software programs, such as spiders, that perform automated tasks on the internet. The most common ones are search engine programs that indexes the Web.
How does this update affect other metrics?
Since interaction metrics are used to calculate other metrics, you might see small changes in metrics such as "Conversion Rate from Interactions, Conversion Increase, and Revenue from Interactions.
How did you make interactions more accurate?
We improved our counting methodology to more accurately record the interactions users are performing on widgets and lightboxes. A large part of this means that we only count interactions if we can verify that a widget loaded.
This prevents measuring fraud or bot traffic and gives you an accurate representation of how actual users are interacting.