To make sure this is a smooth transition and to ensure that your site is not affected, we’re sharing the timelines below for the closing of the Top Posts widget and the Google Reader extension (for all browsers).

• The Top Posts widget and WordPress plugin installs will continue to work as usual until April 1st. At that time the Top Posts widgets and the PostRank APIs will be disabled. Please remove the Top Posts widget javascript code from your site before April 1st, and note that after this time the widget will not display any data.
• Similarly, the Google Reader extension will continue to operate until April 1st. If you are a current user, you can safely remove the browser extension any time before April 1st.

Finally, as of today you will no longer be able to install new Top Posts widgets or Google Reader extensions. This is for new installations only. As mentioned, existing installations will work until April 1st.

We hope you found these services valuable. If you have any questions about the retirement of these services please direct them to support@postrank.com.

The Google Reader Extension for Firefox has been unavailable since March (our blog post for more information). Per that blog post, we are no longer supporting the extension and don’t know at this time when a new version might be available.

For a number of people upgrading to Firefox 4 meant that they could no longer use the Extension, but for those running older versions, it has still worked.

As of Thursday (May 5th), however, we are shutting down the API that powered those older versions of the Extension, so they will cease to work. To get your PostRank filtering fix, we do recommend the Extensions for Chrome and Safari. (We do not know when a new version may be available, since per the blog post referenced above, the upgrades needed are out of our hands.)

As many of you know, Firefox 4 was recently released, and as these things do, included many changes and upgrades. Typically we try to keep up with browser updates, but in this case there’s a bigger picture we’re looking at.

The Firefox team has a project in their labs, called Jetpack, which will enable us to provide the same extension for Firefox as we do for Chrome and Safari. The extension API still needs updating, though, and at this point we’re not aware of any timelines for when Jetpack will officially become part of Firefox.

So until then, the PostRank Google Reader extension for Firefox has been shelved, since minor updates to it in the mean time would mostly just be re-arranging deck chairs. Stay tuned, however! When the Firefox extension comes back, it’ll be pretty awesome stuff.

RWW Co-Editor Marshall Kirkpatrick is an epic bit sifter and analyst, so he knows a few things about efficiency. To that end, to help more quickly learn about new blogs he discovers, he built the PostRank It bookmarklet, or “One-Click Blog Intelligence Community Button”.

From any site you’re on, click PostRank It from your toolbar, and you’ll be taken to that site’s page on postrank.com, automatically displaying the site’s recent posts, their PostRank scores, and a mouseover breakdown of each post’s social engagement events.

Using the Show drop-down, you can also filter the posts by engagement level, or type a keyword in the Search field to filter the posts by topic. Within seconds you’ll have a great overview of the new site, what they write about, and how it performs with its audience.

We love it when our community does cool stuff, especially when it involves even smarter ways to make their days better with PostRank. Thanks, Marshall!

Like the Chrome version, thanks to using native APIs, it has beefed up features (over the Firefox version): real-time and contextual rankings, and the addition of PostRank rankings to other social sites and Google search results.

Safari users, rev up your browsing!

• PostRank Top Posts widget is deployed on over 2,500 sites
• On average, we serve 750,000 daily widget impressions (~23M / month)
• Over 40% of all Top Posts widgets are on Blogger sites.

How does it work? PostRank knows all the stories generated by your site, and we also have all the engagement metrics for each URL. This, in turn, enables our Top Posts widget to dynamically figure out and display which of your recent stories have received the most attention and promote them to your visitors. So, if your last story was hot on Twitter (or any other network), the widget will take that into account and feature it to your visitors.

Contextual Top Posts

However, we don’t stop at the top recent posts either. Our analytics users can also install the “contextual Top Posts” widget, which follows the same methodology as above, but it will also dynamically figure out the best and most related posts from your archive before ranking and returning them to the user. A few examples:

• If a visitor arrives on your page via a search (e.g.: “ruby on rails” on Google), then the widget will pick that up, search the PostRank archive of your site for all content that discusses “ruby on rails”, rank it by engagement and display it to the user!
• If a visitor is exploring your site (not via search), then the widget will automatically detect the key tags for the current page, search the archive, and return the most relevant content.

Best of all, as a publisher, you don’t have to do a thing to enable this functionality – simply install the Top Posts javascript and let PostRank do the rest.

You’ll be in good company, too. Here is a sample of a few larger sites using our widget: Scienceblogs.com, Trouw.nl, Inquisitr, Engadget Korea. In other words, if you haven’t already, make sure to give our Top Posts widget a try!

PostRank + Google Reader

Our Firefox extension has become an indispensable tool for many daily Google Reader users, and today we’re happy to announce the official PostRank extension for Google Chrome! Install it, load up Google Reader, and enjoy all of the benefits of filtering by PostRank engagement.

Because the Chrome extension is using native APIs (Firefox requires Greasemonkey support), we’ve been able to significantly improve the user experience as well — all of the ranking is done in real-time and all the ranks are completely contextual. So if you are reading a specific feed, the PostRank scores are all relative to that feed. But if you are navigating through a folder (e.g. Business), or even the “All Items” tab, then all the stories are ranked with respect to the stories in that view.

Additionally, you will notice a PostRank drop-down in the top navigation menu, which enables you to set and modify your filter criteria for each feed, or folder. Only have 5 minutes to spare? Switch the filter to “Best stories” only and the extension will do the rest.

For more details, check out our PostRank Labs site, or head directly to the Chrome Gallery to install the extension!

Oh, and one more thing…

If you go to the extension options page, you can enable the PostRank extension on a selection of other popular sites as well: Digg, Reddit, Google News, and even Google search results! For each story or search result, the extension will pull in the PostRank metadata for the site, and if you hover over the link, you can preview all of the metrics we have aggregated for that site.

Update: We pushed out an update for the extension that improves the UI and rankings in expanded view considerable. Check it out!

We want to make it easy for publishers to learn more about their audiences and how those audiences interact with publishers’ content. PostRank Analytics is an excellent tool for achieving that goal. But we’ve made it even easier to get started.

Now you can get a great overview of websites’ social engagement with one click!

Take the PostRank Analytics Tour. Enter any website address and see the social engagement metrics for that site over the last 30 days.

• On-site and off-site engagement distribution of audience content interactions
• Engagement points graph that shows overall engagement trends for the site’s content
• Engagement events and points by social hub – clicks, tweets, diggs, etc.

All of this clearly and simply laid out for your perusal. While you’re there, perhaps you’d even like to do a little competitive reconnaissance…

Of course, that’s just a taste of what PostRank Analytics offers. The Tour’s Features section will tell you more about:

• Flexible engagement overviews
• Tracking multiple sites
• Trends
• Integrated Real-Time Google Analytics
• Changing the sites you’re tracking
• Monthly or annual subscriptions.

Still new to discovering and tracking engagement? Learn more on the About Engagement page.

PostRank WordPress Plugin

So what does the Tour‘s engagement info have to do with WordPress? We’ve combined the two!

With the PostRank WordPress Plugin, publishers have already been able to see PostRank scores and an in-line, at-a-glance view of each post’s social engagement.

Now WordPress users can enrich their admin panel with the same dashboard as on the Analytics Tour page. Social engagement metrics for each post AND a 30-day overview of their site’s engagement!

Additionally, we’ve upgraded the Top Posts Widget that’s part of the Plugin’s functionality. A simplified appearance and improved search function. This will help readers find a site’s best content on specific topics of interest even more easily.

All of this functionality for WordPress users isn’t quite as awesome as all the good stuff you’ll be able to discover, track, and grow when you sign up for PostRank Analytics… But we think it’s pretty cool. Get the PostRank WordPress Plugin and check it out!

You can get the new version of the extension here: http://gr.postrank.com.

We WILL make sure to let everyone know once the upgrade is done and the extension is working with Firefox 3.5.