Clearly, identifying these signals is only one step in the search for extraterrestrial communication. If our radio telescope happens to point toward Alpha Centauri while detecting radio signals from a television broadcast that passes overhead, all we know from our data is that we detected a signal while looking at Alpha Centauri. However, if we continue to detect a signal on multiple occasions while pointing toward Alpha Centauri, it becomes less likely that a signal from Earth is the culprit and more likely that we're truly getting a signal from that region in space. Thus, a key task is to identify signals that detected at multiple times from the same location in the sky. The more matches we find for a particular location in space, the more confident we are about a persistent signal coming from that area of the sky.
More matches means better persistency.
A similar graph on our current progress summary page is updated regularly. Clicking the image to the left will take you to a set of four persistency graphs. The main purpose of these graphs is to check the context around a persistent signal to find clues to the source of the signal. Some graphs are clickable, allowing you to view plots broken down by time, power, or score, as well as view plots showing nearby gaussians, spikes, pulses, or triplets. As you can see, there's quite a bit to explore for just one persistent signal.