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Post to Comment/Trackback Ratio

Posted By Darren Rowse 5th of February 2006 Pro Blogging News 0 Comments

Peter from pc4media has posted asking readers what their Post to Comment/Trackback Ratio? is. Peter’s PCTR (did I just make up a new acronym?) is 0.75 if he doesn’t include trackbacks and 0.66 if he does. Here’s his calculations:

‘1694/2245 = 0.75 (My old methodology.)

1694/ (2245+ 339) = 0.66 (Stowe’s “I’m stretching the conversational aspect” methodology)’

What’s your PCTR?

ProBlogger’s total posts is 1970 (wow – I need to start planning a 2000 post celebration) and it has 17533 comments (that includes trackbacks – I’m not sure how to find out how many of them are trackbacks).

So my PCTR is 0.11.

Another way of saying it is that for every post there are 8.9 comments and trackbacks.

So what does it mean? Peter asks readers to say what their PCTR says about themselves as bloggers.

My thoughts are this:

I’m not sure comparing your PCTR with another blog is that helpful. While it might be an indicator of a blog’s interactivity it is difficult to make comparisons between blogs on different topics. Some topics lend themselves to lots of interaction and links from other blogs whereas others do not. This doesn’t make a blog successful or not.

Having said this – I think a ratio like this is useful to keep track of over time IF the goal of your blog is to increase interactivity and reader participation (as one of my goals here at ProBlogger is to do).

Not only is it a bit of fun to do – but if instead of comparing it to other blogs you compare it from month to month or year to year on your own blog you might just have yourself an interesting measure of the health of your blog. Of course it’s not the only measure of health but it’s an interesting one to watch.

I haven’t previously kept an eye on a ratio like this (I guess I could go back and work it out if I had the time) but think I’ll do so in future. Anecdotal evidence suggests to me that my ratio has probably improved as ProBlogger has gotten older. I also notice that the numbers of comments per post go up when I post less frequently – the activity in comments on a post seems to correlate with the length of it’s stay on the front page.

Maybe someone should develop a WP plugin? I’m not sure I’d show it on my blog publicly – but would use it on my dashboard – especially if it could give some historical figures.

Another ratio which would be interesting would be a Comment to Traffic Ratio (CTR?). To work out what percentage of daily visits to a blog comment would be interesting also.

Update: Read more about what some are calling the ‘Conversational Index’ at Don Dodge, Mathewingram.com and Stowe Boyd.

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. […] 4th, 2006 and is filed under News Brief. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently notallowed. […]

  2. I usually calculate it the other way around — comments per post, but doing it as PTCR, I come up with 0.21 (roughly 4.7 comments per post).

  3. 0.57 (or 1.77 comments/post).

  4. 0.00. just started. need to learn lots of things.

  5. @3 comments for every post. PCTR= 0.34

  6. Both of these are silly measures. You (like me) should be looking at the [Comment Wordcount / Post Wordcount] measure, which on my blog is .83. If I am interested in PCTR, I get 1191/3650 = .33.

  7. At a PCTR of 0.13 (or 7.7 comments per post), my blog should be almost as successful as yours, Darren, and far more successful than Elliott’s (yeah, right), when the truth is far far from it.

    My blog aims at writers, and perhaps that says it all. Looking back, but without actual statistical data, I’m pretty sure the amount of comments is in direct relation to traffic.

  8. My best performing blog has a PTCR of 0,17. Not bad

  9. My most active site as a PTCR of 0.05 (115 200 comments, 6255 posts). Beat that :-)

  10. […] As I was writing my post a couple of days back on the Conversation Index (comment to post ratio) that some bloggers are talking about as a measure of success for blogging I found myself asking the question: […]

  11. […] Nachtrag: Der PTCR für blog.ch/blog ist übrigens 436/1912 = 0.23. […]

  12. Bah! Mine’s 2.695. 310 posts, 115 comments. The question is, how do I convince people to comment more often? There’s a good idea for an article or three.

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  15. ‘1694/2245 = 0.75 (My old methodology.)

    1694/ (2245+ 339) = 0.66 (Stowe’s “I’m stretching the conversational aspect” methodology)’

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  18. My blog (in Spanish, and in Argentina) has currently a 2.68 comment to post ratio (I think this is easier to understand than the inverse).

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