#starmeter

Hi there, Anon!

So, I’ve always been a bit confused as to these ratings myself. I found an FAQ page, though, that seems to help explain it.

The tl;dr of it is that since Caitriona and Sam are actors, they’re rated on the same scale or “STARmeter”. Outlander, being a show, is rated on a separate scale. These ratings fluctuate week-to-week based on page viewership.

FAQ for STARmeter

What do the rankings mean?

Plain and simple, they represent what people are interested in, based not on small statistical samplings, but on the actual behavior of millions of IMDb users. Unlike the AFI 100 or Academy Awards, high rankings on STARmeter, MOVIEmeter , and COMPANYmeter do not necessarily mean that something is “good.” They do mean that there is a high level of public awareness and/or interest in the title, person or company.

How are these ratings calculated?

IMDbPro uses proprietary algorithms that take into account several measures of popularity for people, titles and companies. The primary measure is who and what people are looking at on IMDb.

The rankings are updated on a weekly basis.

Are STARmeter, MOVIEmeter , and COMPANYmeter based on polls?

Sort of, users vote through their actions, every time someone visits an IMDb page about one of the over 3 million titles and over 6 million people in the database, we record that “pageview”. It is the sum total of these pageviews that form the foundation of the STARmeter, MOVIEmeter , and COMPANYmeter rankings.

Why does my STARmeter/MOVIEmeter rank change so much from one week to another?

Fluctuations in STARmeter and MOVIEmeter values are normally more evident in people or films with lower rankings. STARmeter rankings are based on several statistical indicators,including the frequency and number of people who access a person’s page or credits on IMDb. MOVIEmeter works in the same way, but ranks titles instead of people.

As is often the case when statistical calculations are performed on such a large sample of data, even small variations in popularity may produce significant changes in rank.

When an individual is very popular, the average interest of users over time remains fairly constant; with less popular names, it’s more common to have sudden and sharp increases or decreases in the number of people who visit their page or see their credits, which explains the higher variance in the STARMeter ranking over time.

Brownie Starmeter

Chris Wood is Top 500 this week on IMDB Starmeter again.