GovClicks is a service from Measured Voice that creates daily lists of U.S. government links that have been shortened and shared using 1.USA.gov, a URL shortener created by USA.gov and bitly. It's a great way to see what kinds of government information people around the world are sharing online.
Measured Voice helped create 1.USA.gov as part of its work on USA.gov’s social media strategies. 1.USA.gov is a service provided by USA.gov and bitly that allows anyone who uses bitly to create short .gov links.
For instance, a person might want to share this link on Twitter or in a text message:
http://www.sandiego.gov/park-and-recreation/golf/torreypines/tournamentsevents/jrworld.shtml
The link is too long, so the person can enter the link at bitly.com and get this short link in return:
http://1.usa.gov/pRHktf
This short link can be shared anywhere and will instantly take anyone who clicks on it to the destination of the long link. Because it includes “USA.gov,” it is crystal clear that it points to a trustworthy U.S. government website.
Since launching in March this year, 1.USA.gov links have been clicked over 6.5 million times. Taken together, this provides a real-time view into what government information people share and click on. Until 1.USA.gov, no one has ever had such a broad view of how all government information is being shared and viewed on the Internet.
USA.gov has made the click data from 1.USA.gov available for anyone to use, which is how we made GovClicks. You can learn more about the data and how to access it on USA.gov's Developer Resources page.
The back-end of GovClicks is powered by a tool we built called Gogogon which gathers data from 1.USA.gov, sorts links by popularity, and produces json and csv files of the data. Gogogon is open source and available under the MIT license. Please fork it and make something great!
If you end up creating something based on 1.USA.gov data, please share it with the world. Tweet about it using the #1USAgov hashtag and we'll spread the word about it.
If you have any questions about GovClicks or Measured Voice, we'd love to hear from you.