This is the primary Chrome Extension overview article. If you need help with troubleshooting, check out the Chrome Extension FAQ article here.
What is the CrowdTangle Chrome Extension?
The Crowdtangle Chrome Extension allows you to navigate to any URL on the web using Google's Chrome browser and to search CrowdTangle's database for any tweets, posts, or subreddits that have linked to that URL.
Why Would I Use the Chrome Extension?
To quickly identify influencers and referral traffic
To get a high level view of the impact a particular URL is having across four platforms
If you want some of the benefits of CrowdTangle but are not eligible for a full account
How Do I Use the Chrome Extension?
Downloading and Installing
The CrowdTangle Chrome Extension only works in Google's Chrome browser, and it can be downloaded in the Google Chrome app store here. Once it's installed, you'll find a small CrowdTangle icon on the upper-right hand side of your Chrome Browser window.
First Time Using the Chrome Extension:
The Chrome Extension can be used by anyone who has a Facebook account, whether or not you have a full CrowdTangle account. The first time you use the Chrome Extension, you'll be asked to log into Facebook to identify yourself, and after that you should be free to use the Extension whenever you would like.
Note: using the Chrome Extension doesn't automatically give you access to a CrowdTangle account.
Using the Chrome Extension on a Webpage:
To use the Chrome Extension, navigate to any URL in your chrome browser and click on the CrowdTangle icon (upper-right). CrowdTangle will then search its database for posts that link that particular URL. CrowdTangle's database includes:
Over 7 million public Facebook Pages, verified profiles, and Groups
Over 2 million public Instagram accounts
Over 16,000 of the most popular subreddits on Reddit
The last seven days of Tweets pulled from Twitter's API. Read about Twitter's API here.
Note that CrowdTangle's database only tracks public content from influential Pages, Groups, and accounts, not the Pages and accounts of "regular" people. So you won't see posts from private or personal accounts, but you will see them from public figures, publishers, government agencies, etc.
The Chrome Extension will show up to 500 posts for a given URL. If the URL has had more than 500 posts, it will prioritize the posts from the last 10 days in the results and then rank them by number of interactions. If a URL has had fewer than 500 posts, you'll see all of the posts in your Chrome Extension results (regardless of when the posts were dated), ranked by number of interactions.
Understanding the Data:
The Chrome Extension data is split between two sections: Facebook Interactions and Top Referrals.
Facebook Interactions:
This section totals up the number of interactions (including reactions, comments, and shares) that a link has received in all of the Facebook posts that have linked to it. This number is NOT limited to CrowdTangle data, and includes all Facebook posts that have linked to this URL, whether public or private.
Top Referrals:
This section provides a snapshot view of the top 500 posts that included the particular URL. You'll see the total number of interactions across all four platforms as well as a combined total of the number of Followers/Likes/Subscribers each Page, Account, or subreddit that posted the URL has.
Source:
The Chrome Extension will also show you the top performing posts monitored by CrowdTangle that linked to the URL, along with the number of total interactions each post received. By clicking on the Platform icon (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Reddit) to the far right of a post entry, you can visit the post in your browser.
Exporting the Data
Clicking on the "Download" icon will export the top 500 posts as a csv file.
Deactivate
You can deactivate the extension here, or on the Google Chrome Extensions page.