We are excited to announce version 3.22 of the wp-parsely plugin provisioned by WordPress VIP’s MU plugins. This new version will become available for testing in non-production VIP environments on Tuesday, January 13, 2026. Version 3.22 will be released to production as the default version of wp-parsely on Tuesday, January 20, 2026.
What’s new
This is mainly a maintenance release focusing on dependency updates.
The Parse.ly Content Intelligence Sidebar now features a “Boost Engagement” button, which opens Engagement Boost for the current post.
We’re excited to announce that you can now inject and configure the required JavaScript snippet for Parse.ly Headline Testing directly from your WordPress Admin area. This update to the Parse.ly Plugin helps your team set up and manage headline testing without manually injecting scripts.
This will be released with version 3.21.0 of the wp-parsely plugin provisioned by WordPress VIP’s MU plugins. This new version will become available for testing in non-production VIP environments on Tuesday, October 14, 2025. Version 3.21.0 will be released to production as the default version of wp-parsely on Tuesday, October 21, 2025.
Why it matters
Until now, setting up Parse.ly Headline Testing required manually inserting JavaScript snippets. This new update removes that friction—helping teams experiment faster, learn what resonates with readers, and continuously improve engagement with less setup time.
Whether your site publishes breaking news or evergreen content, Headline Testing helps your editors make data-driven decisions that boost performance.
What’s included
Headline Testing Configuration: Enable or disable Parse.ly Headline Testing directly in your WordPress Admin.
Advanced Installation Option: Inline headline testing logic for developers who need deeper control.
Flicker Control: Reduce visual flicker when swapping headlines (available with Advanced Installation).
Live Updates: Automatically refresh headline variations on infinite-scroll or dynamically loaded pages.
Granular Settings: Adjust Live Update Timeout and control behavior after page load.
For now, experiments themselves still need to be created and managed directly from the Parse.ly Dashboard. We’re actively exploring ways to bring full experiment management directly into WordPress in a future update.
Get started
To configure Headline Testing:
In your WordPress Admin sidebar, go to Parse.ly → Settings.
Select the Headline Testing tab.
Choose your preferred installation method and configuration options.
Click Save Changes
For best results, use the One-line Snippet method unless your site uses custom caching or rendering logic. Visit your homepage’s source code to confirm the headline testing script is injected correctly.
Parse.ly is always looking for ways to make content analytics more accessible and user-friendly. Today, we’re introducing AI Assist, an intelligent chatbot-powered feature that enables you to access content insights more quickly using natural language.
What is AI Assist?
AI Assist helps you get insights from your content data faster using plain English. Instead of going through multiple pages with many filters, you can now ask questions like the following and get the answers you want:
“What were the top-performing posts by pageviews yesterday?”
“Which topics should I cover today based on last month’s top performers?”
When you ask a question, AI Assist provides the answer directly in the chat interface and offers the option to navigate to the exact dashboard page where you can explore the data further.
AI Assist also helps you understand Parse.ly metrics and terms. For example, if you’re looking at the conversions page and wondering what “last touch” means, AI Assist will explain it to you by pulling information from our documentation pages.
Who will benefit from this?
Customers who want to unlock advanced insights that would otherwise take a lot of time to synthesize. And customers who want to spend less time navigating the dashboard, as well as new users who need to quickly interpret data without knowing every detail of the dashboard.
Why did we build this?
Parse.ly is known for its intuitive and easy-to-use interface. Our mission is to make content analytics accessible to everyone, including those who aren’t tech-savvy. With AI Assist, anyone in the newsroom or in your team can find insights just by asking simple questions.
How can you get AI Assist?
AI Assist is available to Parse.ly customers upon request, as per our policy regarding AI features. If you’re interested, please reach out to Parse.ly support to get access — support@parsely.com . After a quick review, we’ll enable it for you. Once activated, you’ll be able to use it right away.
If you have questions or feedback about AI Assist, please reach out to us. Your input helps us continue building features that make Parse.ly even more valuable for your team.
We are excited to announce version 3.20 of the wp-parsely plugin provisioned by WordPress VIP’s MU plugins. This new version will become available for testing in non-production VIP environments on Wednesday, June 18, 2025. Version 3.20 will be released to production as the default version of wp-parsely on Tuesday, June 24, 2025.
Release Highlights
The primary focus of this update is on enhancing Engagement Boost features.
Floating toolbar
Now, when choosing to accept or reject link placements for the target post, you’ll find these options in a new floating toolbar. This toolbar, which appears above the link text selection, is draggable, providing flexibility. We’ve also added a helpful tip that guides you on customizing the link placement by choosing different text.
Improved text selection
For easier link placement adjustment, users can now triple-click a block of text to select it.
We’re excited to introduce Traffic Boost, a new feature in Parse.ly Content Helper that intelligently places links to fresh content within your site’s highest-performing articles—helping you drive more traffic and engagement with minimal effort.
How Traffic Boost Works
Traffic Boost increases page views and engagement by strategically placing links to key content within high-performing articles on your site. It works by analyzing your existing content to identify the best placement opportunities, ensuring that both newly published and evergreen articles benefit from increased visibility.
Here’s what makes Traffic Boost powerful:
Automatic link placement: Inserts links to new content in relevant, high-performing articles to maximize visibility.
Customizable link suggestions: Review and approve suggested links before they go live, ensuring they fit naturally within your content.
Performance insights: Track how your boosted links are performing through Parse.ly’s analytics, monitoring engagement and recirculation impact.
Why This Matters for Content Teams
If you’re already using Parse.ly Content Helper, you know how valuable AI-driven recommendations can be for optimizing your content strategy. Traffic Boost takes this further by boosting your content’s promotion across your site, drawing active benefit from your best-performing posts.
Get Started with Traffic Boost
Traffic Boost is exclusively available to WordPress sites on the VIP Platform. All VIP customers with a paid Parse.ly contract—or customers with Enhanced, Signature, or Premier packages—have access to Traffic Boost.
Traffic Boost is included in version 3.19 of the wp-parsely plugins provisioned by WordPress VIP’s MU plugins. It will become available for testing in non-production VIP environments on Tuesday, May 20, 2025. Version 3.19 will be released to production as the default version of Parse.ly on Tuesday, May 27, 2025.
If you’re looking to maximize your content’s reach with smarter, automated link placement, now’s the time to try Traffic Boost.
We’re excited to open up access to Parse.ly’s Headline Testing & Optimization feature as part of our new beta! You’ll be able to experiment with multiple headline variations, track performance in real time, and discover what truly resonates with your audience. All fully integrated into your existing Parse.ly workflows.
Why Join the Beta
Great headlines make all the difference. With our new headline optimization tools, you’ll be able to:
Capture more attention by testing multiple headlines and seeing what performs best.
Improve audience engagement by automatically surfacing the highest-performing variations.
Make faster editorial decisions using real-time insights, no more guesswork.
This beta is your chance to shape a tool designed to boost editorial performance at scale.
How It Works
Create Tests Right in Parse.ly: Launch experiments with up to ten headline variants directly from your dashboard.
Get Instant Results: See impressions, clicks, and engagement metrics update live, optimized directly in your analytics.
Smarter Optimization: Unlike traditional A/B tests, our system shifts more traffic to better-performing headlines automatically while still collecting data across all variants.
Who It’s For
Whether you’re in a breaking news environment or refining evergreen stories, this beta is designed for fast-moving teams who want to make data-backed decisions without slowing down.
By joining the open beta, you’ll help us refine the experience while getting early access to powerful headline testing capabilities. Your feedback will directly shape the future of this feature.
You can learn more about headline testing here. If you have any questions, send us an email at support@parsely.com. We’re happy to assist!
When we first unveiled VIP Learn last year, we launched with three courses, all targeted at enterprise WordPress developers. Since then, we’ve steadily expanded our catalog, building a rich, comprehensive curriculum that deepens WordPress developers’ expertise in the enterprise space.
Today, we’re excited to announce an entirely new curriculum inside VIP Learn for content and editorial teams: the Editorial track.
The Editorial track in VIP Learn is designed to help enterprise content creators take advantage of the best features and tools in the WordPress ecosystem. We designed this track based on our many years working with the largest content teams on the web to produce enterprise, news, and government material.
We’re excited to kick off our education targeted towards editorial users with the tool we know best – Parse.ly. Parse.ly provides the tools you need to succeed in today’s competitive digital landscape. No more guesswork about what your audience wants—with Parse.ly, you’ll have clear visibility into content performance.
Through our Parse.ly training inside of VIP Learn, we’ll prepare teams to:
Translate complex metrics into clear editorial direction
Identify high-performing content patterns, and coach writers using actionable data.
Master the analytical skills that will elevate your content strategy using the same approaches driving today’s most successful digital publications.
New Parse.ly Coursework
Our first course, Getting Started with Parse.ly, will help you get started on mastering essential content intelligence strategies with this expert-led material from long-time Parse.ly veterans. Our experts share how to translate audience analytics into editorial decisions that strategically grow readership.
Who Should Enroll?
This course is designed for editorial teams, digital publishers, marketing professionals, and content strategists who want to harness the power of audience analytics to drive content performance. If you’re an editorial professional looking to extract meaningful insights from analytics, our new Parse.ly course is built for you.
What You’ll Learn
Navigate the Parse.ly interface, including key dashboard sections.
Use date ranges, filters, and metadata to analyze content performance.
Install and use Parse.ly tools, like the Chrome bookmarklet.
Export data, create reports, and share insights with your team.
Are you ready to transform how you understand your audience? Get started today!
We are happy to announce that version 3.18 of the Parse.ly plugin will become available in VIP staging environments on Tuesday, April 22, 2025. We recommend testing the new release in staging before using it in production.
This release will become the default in production on Tuesday, April 29, 2025, and all non-pinned environments will be auto-upgraded to this version. These changes only affect customers who use wp-parsely as part of WordPress VIP’s MU plugins.
Release Highlights
This release focuses on enhancements to Related Posts and Smart Linking. It is also complemented by numerous bug fixes and smaller enhancements.
Smart Linking enhancements
Users can now review post data for Smart Links before adding them.
Related Posts improvements
It is now possible to return results based on multiple data points. Users can search by section and/or author and/or tags (maximum of 5 per query).
We’re excited to introduce Your Year in Content, a year-end report that provides a high-level view of your site’s content performance over the past calendar year.
What’s included
This report compiles key metrics at the site level, helping you assess your content strategy and impact:
Total performance metrics – Yearly page views and visitor counts tallied in one place.
Top content analysis – Your top 5 posts, most engaging sections, and highest-impact authors.
Key content insights – Additional data to give you a full picture of your year’s performance, such as your top-tweeted post or top search-driven post.
Why it matters
Inform strategy – Use past performance to guide future content decisions.
Team recognition – Highlight top-performing content and contributors.
Annual planning – Leverage insights to set data-driven goals for the year ahead.
How to access your report
Your Year in Content report is available now! To view it, replace {{SITEID}} with your site’s ID, such as wpvip.com in the below URL.
We’re pleased to announce the launch of the custom report capabilityin Parse.ly, an enhancement to the report generation process that gives you greater flexibility and control over your data. This feature allows you to preview and customize your data before generating your final report.
Why this matters
Modern content teams need adaptable reporting tools to make informed decisions. With the new report generation tool, you can:
Personalize report structures by customizing the layout.
Edit or rearrange sections and metrics to match your needs.
Preview data before finalizing your report, ensuring accuracy.
This feature is particularly valuable for teams that rely on tailored insights, allowing them to generate reports that align with their specific reporting needs.
Which reports can I customize?
The first phase of this release makes the new report available within the Details Report. Future updates will extend this capability to additional pre-built reports. No special setup is required to start using this capability.
You can learn more about the custom report capability here. If you have any questions, send us an email at support@parsely.com—we’re happy to assist!
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