Google Acquires Social Analytics Company PostRank

PostRank, a company focusing on social data analytics, engagement and, now to a lesser degree, content discovery, has been acquired by Google. The company hasn't said what it plans to do with its latest acquisition but it will likely integrate the technology into its Analytics product. The existing products and customers will be maintained, for the time being, but new registrations have been shut down.

"From the seed of an idea in late 2006, to the launch of PostRank in mid 2007, and an incredible four years," PostRank wrote in the post announcing the acquisition. "Today, we are excited to announce that PostRank has been acquired by Google," it said.

During the years, PostRank shifted more towards social data analytics. Its tools can scan the web for mentions of a blog post or other content. It looks for links and mentions on various other sites, Twitter, comments, Delicious and so on.

PostRank enables users to see how well the things they publish are doing and it's likely this aspect of the business that Google is most interested in.

"We know that making sense of social engagement data is important for online businesses, which is why we have worked hard to monitor where and when content generates meaningful interactions across the web," PostRank explained.

"Indeed, conversations online are an important signal for advertisers, publishers, developers and consumers—but today’s tools only skim the surface of what we think is possible," it added.

Google says that social analytics holds a lot of promise and that it's looking at ways it can incorporate it into its products and make the data more relevant to the users, with the help of the Post Rank team. The team, or at least a big part of it, will be moving from Canada to Google's headquarters in Mountain View.