What’s the algorithm behind determining who are the Hot Prospects?

September 27, 2020
Mike Smith
mike@hotprospects.com

Hot Prospects® was recently asked about the process we go through in determining the overall rank or score of any given post on the platform. There is a list of calculated values that determine the overall rank of a specific posting, without giving away too much, we can list some of the major key performance indicators used in determining the overall rank:

Page Views When a user lands on any of the detail pages of a specific post, we check against a list of existing visits to determine returning users vs. first time users.

User Sessions Sessions are based on the number of times a visitor has come to the site and landed on at least one detail page.

Consumer Engagement

• Lead Generation Form – When a consumer fills out and submits the form.
• Reviews – When a consumer fills out the Review for a specific posting.

Creator Engagement
Creators need to keep creating. In order to have success on this platform, it is important to remember that fresh content is king, so keep posting updates.

Total Number of X

• Total Number of Posts on the platform
• Total Number of Products
• Total Number of Services
• Total Number of Events
• Total Number of Articles

Key Performance Indicators and the weight of the score

It may seem obvious to some that have been using the platform already, but we certainly do weigh certain indicators more than others when calculating the rank of a specific post. A form submission from a consumer or a product review submission will always weigh more in the calculation process than the total number of page views.

Exist Strategy for Analytics Data

Considering all of the security implications with customer data (EUGDPR and now California) and the potential issues with selling that data, Hot Prospects has decided to remove the data from the system daily. Our goal is not to build another analytic engine, or resell your personal engagement, but only count the engagement and rank the post accordingly. Once the collected analytic data has been converted to a value that can be used in the calculation process, we dump the analytics, but we keep the ranking values.