Creating a Year Over Year Analysis

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Modified on: Wed, 7 Dec, 2022 at 3:50 PM

Using the Total Mentions Chart for a Year Over Year Analysis:

The Total Mentions chart calculation can be changed to show a year-over-year coverage analysis. It is important to note that an effective year-over-year analysis can only be created if your Cision Communications Cloud has been monitoring coverage for at least part of two consecutive years. It is also important to be sure you are including both years of coverage in the analysis. 

To begin creating your year-over-year analysis, you will want to find coverage in your system from part of or all two consecutive years.

1. Click the Search page from the News tab.
2. Select the criteria for which you will be conducting the year-over-year analysis.
3. You will want to include a Date Range in your criteria. The range will need to include part of or all two consecutive years.
4. Click Search to see coverage that meets your criteria.

NOTE: If you have 5,000 News results from your search and have not yet requested that Customer Support increase the number of News results you can see at a time, you will want to consider either contacting Customer Support here to increase the number of News results or consider creating the year over year analysis from the Account Level Analytics tab.

If your results are under 5,000 or you can see above 5,000 results (indicating that an increase in results has already been requested), you can proceed with creating the year-over-year analysis.

1. Click on the top check box to include all coverage results from your search in the year-over-year analysis. You have the option to deselect any coverage that should not be included by unchecking.
2. Click the Analysis button in the upper right-hand corner.

• Within the Analysis dashboard, you will want to locate the Total Mentions chart.  If your dashboard does not have a Total Mentions chart, click here to learn how to customise the dashboard to include one. Click here if you prefer to create a new dashboard with a Total Mentions chart for your year-over-year reporting. 
•  Once you have identified or created the Total Mentions chart, click the Gear icon within the Total Mentions chart.

1. An options menu will enable you to change certain chart attributes.
2. Within the Advanced Options section of the menu, change the Frequency to monthly.
3. Next, select Year Over Year as the calculation.
4. Finally, you will need to specify that the chart uses a custom date range of the most recent year.  Doing so lets the chart know which year you want to see the comparison.  For example, below, a custom data range from 1/1/18 to 12/31/18 has been added. This lets the chart know that results for 2018 compared to 2017 should be displayed by the chart instead of vice versa.
5. The modified Total mentions chart will be displayed. There will be a calendar icon in the screen's upper left-hand corner, indicating that a custom date range is being used to influence the chart’s data. You may want to remove the custom date range once your year-over-year analysis is complete, as the setting will stay until purposefully removed.
6. Examine the Y-axis of the chart carefully.  Because comparison is being used in this calculation, it is possible for there to be negative data points which indicate that there was less coverage during a particular month of the most recent year as compared to the preceding year.  A positive data point indicates that there was more coverage during a particular month of the most recent year than the prior year.

Reporting on the Year Over Year Analysis:

You can download the Total Mentions chart with the year-over-year calculation as an image or data.

To download the year-over-year Total Mentions charts,

1. Hover your mouse over the bottom of the chart until an options menu appears, and click on the download option.
2. Select whether you want to download the chart as an image (JPG)  or data (XLS). The related file type will download.