Does marking content shipped change my score?

No. Nothing you type changes a measurement. The marker tells the next run which content to grade against which questions; the engines' answers do the rest.

I shipped a piece of content but the brief still says Open.

Check that the brief you marked is the one the content was written for. Each brief has its own marker. If you marked the wrong one, Undo it and mark the right one.

Can I mark content I wrote without a brief?

Not yet. A marker belongs to a brief because the grading needs the target questions. If you have written content for a question that has no brief, suggest the question on Your Questions and it gets one at the next version boundary.

Mark it shipped, undo, and correct the URL

Section 2 on a brief: the live URL field, the Mark shipped button, and a shipped marker with Correct the URL and Undo beside it.

What to do

Step by step.

Publish the content on your own site. Nothing in the portal publishes anything.
On the brief, paste the live address under 2. Mark it shipped and press Mark shipped. The confirmation reads: marked shipped, the date goes on your trend chart and the next monthly run grades the content.
If the address was wrong, press Correct the URL next to the marker, fix it, and press Save URL.
If the marker was a mistake (wrong brief, not live yet, a test), press Undo, say why if you like, and press Remove the ship marker. The brief goes back to its last check.

What happens next. The next monthly run lands in the last week of the month and grades the content: per target question and per engine, gained, held or lost. On Done for you, Re-measure now asks today instead of waiting.

The ship marker is the small step that closes the loop. Without it the content is just live; with it the content is connected to the questions it was written to earn, and the next run grades it. The date lands on your trend so that when a cell moves you can see what came first.

Two corrections are built in because mistakes happen: Correct the URL for a wrong address, and Undo for a marker that should not be there. Both are open until the first re-measure; after that the record belongs to the trend.

How to read it

What the screen is telling you.

The marker reads Live at your address since the date, with checked: ready or no check on record. Mark it shipped stays closed while the last check of the draft is Blocked; it opens as soon as a check passes.
Shipped is what connects the content to the map. From the ship date, its target questions are graded by the next monthly run, and the Overview shows what we shipped along the way beside the trend, so you can see what came first.
Undo and Correct the URL are available only until the content has been re-measured. After that the record is part of the trend and stays.
On Done for you, we mark our own content shipped as we publish it; the marker shows the same way on the Content Pipeline card.

Questions

People ask.

Does marking content shipped change my score?: No. Nothing you type changes a measurement. The marker tells the next run which content to grade against which questions; the engines' answers do the rest.
I shipped a piece of content but the brief still says Open.: Check that the brief you marked is the one the content was written for. Each brief has its own marker. If you marked the wrong one, Undo it and mark the right one.
Can I mark content I wrote without a brief?: Not yet. A marker belongs to a brief because the grading needs the target questions. If you have written content for a question that has no brief, suggest the question on Your Questions and it gets one at the next version boundary.