Parse.ly Metadata: Setup and configuration

Once you have properly configured the Parse.ly tracker, specifying metadata information on your web pages is the second step of integrating with Parse.ly. 

Proper metadata is vitally important for a successful Parse.ly integration. Without correct metadata, posts may not be attributed to the correct author or section, duplicate entries for posts may be created, posts may track with incorrect dates.

Additional resources about the importance of metadata and how Parse.ly uses it can be found in our posts How metadata supercharges analytics in Parse.ly and The Magic of Metadata.

Metadata options and specifications

Metadata is typically provided to Parse.ly via the addition of a tag or tags to the source code of pages. Publishers can provide metadata in this manner via two methods:

• JSON-LD (recommended) – following open standards and schemas, metadata is included in a script tag. This metadata can also be used by other services (such as Google, for enhanced display in search listings).
• Repeated meta tags – if the CMS you are using has a way to provide page information as meta tags in the page header, then this might be a more convenient option. Metadata specified this way will only be used by Parse.ly. These meta tags will take precedence over any values provided in JSON-LD blocks.

It is possible to have both JSON-LD and repeated meta tags on the same page. A publisher may wish, for example, to use a JSON-LD @type value not supported by Parse.ly. In that case, the publisher could specify a meta tag indicating that a page should be tracked as a post and configure all other values in a JSON-LD tag. The value of the meta tag would take precedence over the @type value set in the JSON-LD.

Parse.ly also has an API endpoint that allows publishers to send metadata about a URL. At this time, that endpoint is write-only, meaning metadata sent via the API endpoint cannot be updated in your Parse.ly dashboard.

Video metadata must be sent via the /metadata API endpoint if you would like to access video data in the API.