I’ve received a few enquiries lately about how myScoop determines which articles are “popular” and which are not. The simple answer is to make use of the shortened URI of the article that myScoop generates once it has fetched and processed your latest article. This shortened URI is a basic “pointing system” that when clicked on, myScoop will record certain information and then redirect you to the correct article post linked to the shortened code. Follow these steps after logging in to get your myScoop shortened URI:
Go to “My Page” and scroll towards the bottom where your latest articles are shown, click the “More” link next to the article of your choice.
Copy the “Short Link” given on the page and use that for your twitter updates or facebook updates. By making use of the myScoop shortened URI, myScoop will record how many people click on the link and rank your article accordingly. myScoop tries to to exclude all bots and crawlers that add no value to the statistics, although every now and again one or two may be missed.
The “Popular Articles” are kept for a maximum of 48 hours, thereafter the article will fall off the popular article list and be replaced by a new popular article.
I hope to see more people making use of this system, after all, being on the front page has its benefits such as getting some of myScoop’s PageRank which in turn will help your blog do better. There is method in my madness after all.