What are STARmeter? & MOVIEmeter?
 

STARmeter^TM and MOVIEmeter^TM are powerful market research tools developed by IMDb to give industry professionals insight into the popularity of film and television productions and the people who make them.

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^TM or Academy Awards^TM, high rankings on STARmeter^TM and MOVIEmeter^TM 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 or person.

How are these ratings calculated?

IMDb Pro uses proprietary algorithms that take into account several measures of popularity for people and titles. The primary measure is who and what people are looking at on the public IMDb.com website. Other factors include Box office receipts and user quality votes on a scale of 1-10.

The rankings are updated on a weekly basis.

Are STARmeter^TM and MOVIEmeter^TM based on polls?

Sort of. Users vote through their actions, every time someone visits an IMDb web page about one of the over 290,000 titles and over 1 million people in the database, IMDb records that "pageview". It is the sum total of these pageviews that form the foundation of the STARmeter^TM and MOVIEmeter^TM rankings.

Could someone "rig" the ratings by visiting an IMDb page repeatedly?

No. IMDb.com has over 16 million visitors each month. The STARmeter^TM and MOVIEmeter^TM rankings are based on a cumulative total of more than 1 billion pageviews. Furthermore, IMBd has designed the ranking algorithm so that the actions of one user (or small group of users) has a limited impact.

How do STARmeter^TM and MOVIEmeter^TM compare with other rankings?

Some ranking systems are based on the opinion of one "expert" or a selected group of "experts". Others use statistical samplings of a few hundred or a few thousand people, offering them a controlled set of choices, and ranking only within that set.

The IMDb, on the other hand, offers a nearly unlimited set of choices with over 290,000 titles and over 1,000,000 people to choose from, and base the rankings on the behavior of a sampling group of over 16 million monthly visitors in a real-world environment.