Viewing Topics

To view Topics in your account, select Topics under Content in the Lytics navigation bar. The page header reports how many Supertopics and Topics the selected Context Layer holds, and a Context layer selector above the sections switches between them.

Topics are generated using Lytics' Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools, as well as meta-tags from webpages. To learn more about how Topics are enriched, visit our Enrichment documentation.

Common Topics

The Common Topics table holds the 500 most common Topics across your URLs, plus any Topic you have allowed, and it changes as new content arrives. Each row gives the Topic's Name, the number of URLs that mention it, and its User Count — the number of users who have a score for it. A Topic you added yourself carries a Custom chip. Search narrows the table, and Show more extends it.

Three tabs divide the list: Topics, everything currently in your taxonomy; Allowed Topics; and Blocked Topics.

Allowing and Blocking Topics

Select the checkbox beside one or more Topics to allow or block them.

Allowing a Topic pins it into your taxonomy, so it stays available for audiences and personalization even if it stops being common.

Blocking a Topic takes it out of circulation: blocked Topics are hidden from the Topics list and are not used in new Supertopics or Audiences. This is the tool to reach for where Lytics' NLP has picked up something irrelevant.

Both are scoped to the selected Context Layer, so the same Topic can be blocked in one Context Layer and left in circulation in another. A single Topic can also be blocked or unblocked from its summary page.

Topic Summary

Clicking a Topic in the Topics table opens its summary page, which reports how much of your content covers the Topic and how engaged your audience is with it. The page has three tabs — Summary, Content map and Details — and the Topic's name carries a Custom or Blocked chip where either applies.

If Lytics has no figures for the Topic at all — because nothing has been classified against it, or because no Topic by that name exists — the page says so above the tabs. A single figure Lytics could not measure reads as a dash rather than a zero.

Blocking a Topic From Its Summary

Opposite the Topic's name is Block topic, or Unblock topic where the Topic is already blocked. This is the same action as the checkbox in the Common Topics table described under Allowing and Blocking Topics, applied to one Topic at a time.

Blocked Topics are hidden from the Topics list and are not used in new Supertopics or Audiences. Unblocking puts the Topic back into circulation.

Blocking is scoped to the Context Layer the page resolved, not to your account as a whole: the same Topic can be blocked in one Context Layer and left in circulation in another.

The Blocked chip beside the Topic's name reads from the same Context Layer list the action writes to, so the chip and the button always agree. Lytics confirms each change with a short Topic blocked. or Topic unblocked. message.

Without permission to manage Topics, the button still appears in place but is disabled. Where no Context Layer resolves for the page, the action is not offered at all.

Summary Tab

Metrics

Avg Level of Interest: The average score among users who have a score for this Topic, from 0 to 1, shown rounded down to two decimals. The band named underneath describes that average, not your users: Uninterested (below 0.25), Low Affinity (0.25 to under 0.50), Some Affinity (0.50 to under 0.75), or High Affinity (0.75 and above).
URLs: The number of URLs that mention the Topic.
Users: The number of users who have a score for this Topic.

Who Is Interested

The Who is interested chart plots how your scored users are spread across the 0-to-1 range; hovering a bar reads out the users sitting at that score. Select a band in either of two ways:

Click a preset chip — High Affinity, Some Affinity, Low Affinity, Uninterested, or Any Affinity. Each chip carries the number of users it selects.
Drag the two handles to set your own range. The Custom chip fills in when you do.

Bands are half-open, so a score sitting exactly on a shared edge belongs to the higher band. Expand Rule to read the SegmentQL your current selection would produce.

A Topic that no one has scored yet reports No score distribution is available for this topic yet. in place of the chart.

Recent Content

Recent content lists the URLs carrying this Topic, newest first, eight at a time — Show more extends the list, Show less collapses it. Content must be classified before it appears here; a Topic with nothing classified against it reads No content carries this topic yet.

Segmentation With Topics

Once a band selects the users you want, there are two ways to turn it into an Audience. Both require permission to create Audiences.

Build audience opens a drawer that creates the Audience without leaving the page. It carries an editable Audience name and the identifier it will be saved under, an Audience size queried from your live audience rather than read off the chart, where the band sits on the distribution, and a ledger of who is in, who is out, and who is not counted either way — profiles with no score for this Topic fall in that last group. The Audience stays live: membership is a rule, not a saved list, so anyone whose score later moves into the band joins on their own.
Refine in audience builder hands off to the Audience Builder with the band already applied, for when you want to combine the Topic with other rules.

To include every user who has shown any interest in a Topic, use the Any Affinity preset, or the Exists operator if you are building in the Audience Builder.

Content Map Tab

The Content map plots this Topic against the ones appearing on the same URLs, as a graph you can pan and explore. Your Topic sits at the centre, and the size of each other node reflects how much content carries it.

Clicking a node opens a panel beside the map describing that Topic's relationship to the one whose page you are on: its URLs, Users and Avg interest, the Topics it also appears alongside, and a Keep exploring list. Clicking a Topic in the panel re-points it rather than opening a second one. A Topic you reached by exploring rather than from the top-ranked set says so.

Three actions sit at the foot of the panel:

View summary opens that Topic's own page.
Create supertopic from cluster builds a Supertopic from the pair without leaving the map.
See shared content lists the URLs carrying both Topics.

Creating a Supertopic here requires permission to manage Topics. Without it the action still appears in place, disabled, with the reason on hover.

A Topic with no neighbours in the selected Context Layer reads No related topics. Nothing in this layer appears on the same URLs as this topic. Usually that means your content barely touches it.

Details Tab

Name: The Topic as Lytics stores it.
Field: The profile field this Topic's scores are written to.
Context layer: The Context Layer that scoped the figures on this page.
Tags: Custom, Blocked, or Allowed, where they apply.
Last modified: When Lytics last processed the Topic. This is not a record of someone editing it.

Sharing a Link

The active tab and Context Layer both travel in the page's URL, so a link reproduces the view you were looking at.