If your poll allows users to enter their own answer the data collected can be displayed in a “Popular Answers” list and “Popular Words” cloud.

The popular answers list is sorted in descending order with the most popular answers at the top. It’s possible to add any answer to the poll as a new poll answer. The original answers are still recorded and the new answer will have a vote count of zero.

The popular words section is a word cloud of the most popular words used. Some common English words are excluded such as about, above, and, at, he, here and others. Singular and plural words are matched together. For example the words “kids” and “kid” count towards one word, “kid.”

Polldaddy content now reaches over 210 million people around the world each month. That is a lot of people!

We are also now serving over 2.2 billion widgets each month. All of our traffic numbers are publicly available here.

Thanks to you, our users, for helping us build the best tools available for getting feedback (and thanks to our developers and systems team for keeping our service running so fast). We will be working hard this year to make it easier for you to create the kind of content you want, and on new ways for you to collect responses and votes from your audience.

I am proud to be part of team Polldaddy with you :)

In a recent article, Poynter.org mentioned Polldaddy.com as one of five survey services journalists can use to gather the feedback and data they need to write stories.

You can get started with a free account and begin creating surveys straight away. If you have any questions, please reach out to us in support at support[AT]polldaddy[DOT]com.

First, login to Polldaddy.com and click on Email Groups in the main navigation:

Next, on the email groups page, click on the blue, Add a new Email Group button:

Now, we’re ready to upload the CSV file that contains our mailing list. Note that the order of the columns in the CSV file must be: Email Address, First Name, Last Name, and Custom Data. To upload your file, click on the Import from CSV button on the top right hand corner of the Email Groups page:

Next, select Choose File, then navigate to the CSV file on your computer. Select it, and click on the blue, Upload button:

You’ll see the members of your list appear on the bottom of the screen:

You can click on the Edit button on the member’s row to change their information or the Delete button to remove them from the list.

To finalize your mailing list, click on the blue, Save Group button at the bottom of the screen:

You’ll be returned to your list of Email Groups, and will see a success message at the top of the screen.

That’s all there is to it!

First you’ll want to create a survey.

To remove the question numbers, hover over the title of your survey in your dashboard and click on Edit:

Scroll down to the bottom of the page for survey options. Just beneath Language Customization, you’ll see a checkbox that says Show question numbers:

To remove the question numbers, uncheck the box and click on the blue Save Settings button:

That’s all there is to it!

First, you’ll want to create a survey.

Next, add an address question type to your survey:

We’ve been using the fictitious but fun Polldaddy Pizzeria for our iPad posts and configurable addresses are exactly what we need. When you’ve got all the possible options selected for an address question, you’ll have an Address Line 1, Address Line 2, City, State, Zip Code, and Country:

Since we can only deliver within a half hour’s car ride from our pizzeria, all we need are the address lines 1 and 2, and a zip code to confirm the location. We can uncheck City, State, and Country, leaving only the fields we really need:

Once we’ve completed configuring the address question type, we can go to our iPad. Touch the app icon on your iPad to launch it. Touch the Cloud icon to see/refresh the list of surveys in your Polldaddy.com account. Tap the survey you wish to update and click on the blue Save Selections button:

Next, check out the configurable address question on the iPad. Now we just need to type in the address to which we want our pizzas delivered and wait for them to arrive:

Collecting data in the field? Get started with the Polldaddy iPad app. Going to a trade show? Having forms completed in the field? Here’s how to run the Polldaddy iPad app in kiosk mode.

Web surveys are easy to run and often produce high engagement and great topics for conversation. If there’s a subject or discussion that’s particularly contested, or where you suspect showing the distribution of beliefs, usage or opinions can be revealing, check out a tool like…Polldaddy…

Here’s a short guide that shows you how to create a survey. If you want to take that survey on the road to your audience at the mall, the school, the trade show, the doctor’s office—wherever the may be, you might be interested in our free iPad app. With it, you can sync up Polldaddy surveys and quizzes, to collect data in the field, even if you don’t have an internet connection.

Blacklisting an IP address

To access the IP blacklist feature, hover over the title of your poll and click on Reports:

On the Reports screen, click on IP Analysis:

On the IP Analysis report, you’ll see a list of the IP addresses and the number of votes placed from each address. Note that as a poll owner, you have the duty and responsibility to monitor the poll’s voting patterns. You may, as the poll owner, delete any poll votes you deem suspect at your discretion. To do this, hover over the IP address to reveal contextual buttons. To ban an IP address from participating in the poll and delete all the votes accumulated from the IP address, click on the Blacklist button:

When you choose to blacklist an IP address, ALL the votes accumulated from the IP address will be deleted. If you’re sure you want to ban the IP address and delete the votes, accept the confirmation:

Removing votes from an IP address

You can simply choose to delete all the votes that have come in from a given IP address. To do so, hover over your poll’s title in your dashboard and click on Reports, then click on IP Analysis. Hover over the IP address in question, to reveal the contextual buttons. Click on Remove:

To permanently delete all the votes from the IP address, accept the confirmation:

If, as the poll owner, you’d like a second opinion on your poll’s voting patterns, you’re always welcome to contact us in Polldaddy Support.

Running a short-term contest?

It’s important to note that the IP Analysis and IP Blacklisting features are available to paid account holders only. We have monthly accounts available on request that will allow you to access these advanced features, as well as the ability to export your data, and more. You can set up a monthly subscription, run your contest, monitor the voting, export the data, and then cancel the subscription to avoid being charged for future months. For more information, please contact Polldaddy Support.

To access this new report, hover over a survey in your account and click on Reports:

On the Reports screen, click on the Devices menu item:

Here’s a full-length version of the report. (Click to open a larger version.)

Devices, browsers, and versions, oh my!

The report contains the following subsections.

The Response Source lets you know which percentage of visitors used a web browser and which percentage used a mobile device to complete your survey:

The Computing Platform tells you the operating system your participants were using when they completed your survey:

Note, that if you want to drill down to learn more about any Computing Platform or Browser, you can click on any item to learn more. Here, we want to see the breakdown of participants who said they were using Mac OS X:

Here, we can see the platform breakdown for those using Mac OS X:

Finally, you can also see the browsers participants used to complete your survey. Remember that you can click on any browser to drill down further:

Of the list, Polldaddy is the only web-based poll/survey application.

Did you know that you can create polls, surveys, quizzes, and ratings for free? To get started, create a free account.

Check out our getting started guides to get up to speed on how to create content. Here’s how to:

• Create a survey
• Create a poll
• Create a quiz
• Create a rating

If you want to collect survey data in the field, our iPad app is a great way to take your survey to your participants–even without an internet connection.