Using anonymised data the social networking site says it can tell website owners the number of times people encounter the plug-ins, whether they clicked or commented, whether those encounters took place within Facebook and whether users then clicked through from Facebook to view the content.

The Insights update also adds in demographic information tied to the interactions that occur both on publisher-owned sites and within Facebook. Reported data covers gender, age range, country and language and is aggregated “so no personally identifiable information can be accessed,” said Facebook engineer Alex Himel.

• Research today launched its own Facebook Page, at www.facebook.com/researchlive. So if you like us, why not ‘like’ us.