Facebook has made some incredibly updates to Facebook’s real time analytics for social plugins that will give webmasters some useful tools for SEO.  “We hope the real-time reporting and additional granularity help you quickly identify opportunities to highlight engaging content,” says Facebook engineer Alex Himel.

The following are the updates and improvements made by Facebook’s real time analytics for social plugins:

Facebook’s Real Time Analytics for Social Plugins |Like button analytics

For the first time, you can now access real-time analytics to optimize Like buttons across both your site and on Facebook. We use anonymized data to show you the number of times people saw Like buttons, clicked Like buttons, saw Like stories on Facebook, and clicked Like stories to visit your website.

You can use this real-time data to test the impact of button placement on Like Button CTR or identify the Open Graph image that generates the highest Like Story CTR.

Facebook’s Real Time Analytics for Social Plugins |Comments box analytics

Last week Facebook launched an updated Comments Box that improves the quality of conversations and drives traffic to the websites that use it. Similar to the data we provide for Like buttons, it shows the number of times people saw Comments Boxes, left comments, saw comment stories on Facebook, and clicked to see the content on your site.

Facebook’s Real Time Analytics for Social Plugins |Popular pages

Facebook has also expanded Popular Pages to show you the top 100 pages that people are liking, commenting on, and sharing. We hope the real-time reporting and additional granularity help you quickly identify opportunities to highlight engaging content.

Facebook’s Real Time Analytics for Social Plugins |Demographics

To help you tailor your content and products to your users, Facebook now provides demographic information for the interactions that occur on your site and on Facebook. It displays demographics for gender, age range, country, and language, and we count data on a per-interaction (not per-user) basis. This data is aggregated so no personally identifiable information can be accessed.

Facebook’s Real Time Analytics for Social Plugins |Organic sharing

Insights is designed for websites that use social plugins, but even those that haven’t yet implemented plugins can see how people are sharing links to your site in status updates and Wall posts. After you claim access, visit the “Shares” tab to see traffic generated from links copy-and-pasted into the Publisher or posting a link using the old Share functionality.

For more information about Facebook’s real time analytics for social plugins, visit:https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/476

Obviously, this information is valuable to anyone involved in online marketing.  For example, being able to test real time results of the ‘like’ button placement can assist the business owner with increased traffic to their site.  As more information about Facebook’s real time analytics for social plugins or any other relevant updates from Facebook occur, Black Box Social Media will let you know.