Understanding Comment Sampling

Siftsy uses comment sampling to analyze posts with large comment volumes, letting you get insights from any public post regardless of engagement level.

What comment sampling means

Siftsy analyzes a representative subset of available comments rather than every single one. The sample captures major patterns, sentiment shifts, and recurring themes, which helps deliver insights for day-to-day monitoring across posts, accounts, and platforms.

How sampling works

Siftsy constructs each sample using a two-part approach:

• Base comments: Top engaged comments are included first

• Remaining comments: 10% of a random sample of remaining comments

The total sample is capped based on your plan's sampling tier:

Why sampling is useful

• Analyze any public comment section regardless of engagement level.

• Get a crucial read on trends, topics, campaigns, or crisis reactions

• Identifying the holistic direction and shape of audience reactions

What sampling cannot guarantee

Sample-based analysis is optimized for directionally accurate insights, not guaranteed full coverage of every individual comment.

For detailed audits, compliance workflows, deep community management, individual customer service, treat results as high-level, directionally accurate insights rather than exhaustive counts.

Sampling tiers by plan

Different plans include different sampling levels:

Full Read (coming soon)

Full Read will capture and process every available comment for selected analyses, using extra credits on an as-needed basis. This is designed for use cases that require complete comment coverage and exhaustive review.

Related docs

• How to start analyzing comments

• How posts are processed

• The Siftsy Content Selection Framework