blog post surging, PostRank wimping

Answered via email, copied here for reference.

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Hi Lee,

The short answer to that is because we stop checking for metrics after a period of time (about a month). That's based on research on the "engagement curve" and determining when most posts get engagement, how soon, and how long it lasts, etc. With the way the system currently works, there's a sort of engagement expiration. Checking indefinitely requires a lot more resources.

That said, the conversation has been had a few times, and we have a backlog item to hash out a couple of ways we might implement this in the future. The first is automatic -- detecting new engagement when we check the feed, and kickstarting checking of older posts again if we see they have new engagement. Basically the post's life cycle would start over again. The second is more manual, enabling the author to manually reschedule engagement checks if they notice they've received new engagement or their numbers don't match with our system (because additional engagement has come in). The second option would be done in conjunction with blog claiming, giving blog owners a bit more control of the handling of their feeds in our system.

However, as noted, it's a backlog item, so we have no specific plans to do it (or how we'd do it) just yet. The main reason we built the system the way we did is that posts that get engagement long after they're published are rare in the grand scope of things. We've researched posts' lifecycle extensively, and the engagement curve is pretty consistent across all kinds of blogs. Of course, there's always the challenge of how to best manage the edge cases (balancing investment and ROI for both us and the users).

Hope that helps explain things. Not terribly satisfying, I'm sure, but that's how things currently work.

Melanie