Google Reader Says It Does “Dailyish” Update Of Subscriber Counts

When Google Reader launched new subscriber figures earlier this week, I touched base with Google to find out if they’d be doing a real top blogs list rather than the ad-hoc ones now out there, plus how often the stats were updated and a few more things. Answers have come back from Google Reader product […]

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When Google Reader
launched new subscriber figures earlier this week
, I touched base with
Google to find out if they’d be doing a real top blogs list rather than the
ad-hoc ones now out there, plus how often the stats were updated and a few more
things. Answers have come back from Google
Reader
product manager Nick Baum. Will a
top list come? He can’t say. But he did say figures are updated roughly every
day and anyone with a subscription is counted, regardless of whether they read
the feed. Longer answers are below.

Question: Why did you start reporting counts?

Nick: We had the data since the subscriber stats launch in February,
and we figured it could help users make better decisions about which feeds to
subscribe to.

Question: Will you do a top feeds list?

Nick: We generally don’t discuss future plans.

Question: How often are the Google Reader figures updated?

Nick: Dailyish, though they might occasionally fall a bit behind.

Question: What to the figures mean? IE, does the count show anyone who
has a subscription? Only those who have a subscription and have actually been
monitored to have read an item from the feed in a set period of time? Anyone who
has that particular feed in their subscriptions?

Nick: Anyone who has that particular feed in their subscriptions.

I sent the questions along before Mashable did

its very nice look
at how default feeds work on Google Reader and how these
mean many who might not actually read posts from some blogs are counted as
readers just for having a subscription. As you can see, Google confirms this is
the case with Google Reader.

As Mashable also noted, this is the case for many other feedreaders.
Moreover, it’s true for any feed, regardless of whether it is a default choice.
Being a default choice just means you get many more subscribers faster.

I’d stop short of saying counting those who might not actually read a feed as
a subscriber means those readers stats are bullshit, as Mashable called them.
Instead, I think FeedBurner gave an excellent

explanation
last year about the difference between subscriber figures and
reach:

FeedBurner’s
"Reach"
calculation
is akin to the number of people who have opened the newspaper
and actually glanced at the Sudoko puzzle, as opposed to the guy who lets his
paper sit out in the rain and get soggy while he’s spending the weekend in
Medicine Hat. He’s still considered a subscriber, but just can’t get to his
feeds right now.

One interesting thing would be for FeedBurner to post reach figures, rather
than subscribers figures. Similarly, the services that report these figures to
FeedBurner and others might adopt this metric. Of course, the screams would
start as everyone’s counts suddenly dropped!

Still, subscriber figures are also useful. Sure, that "newspaper" delivered
might not get read — but someone is taking it and potentially will be reading
it.

We’re going to take a closer look at feed stats and related issues in the
near future. In the meantime, I’d encourage people to also read

FeedBurner’s View of the Feed Market
from earlier this year, which also
addressed the entire default feed situation:

Many aggregators offer a set of default feeds for every new account, or
provide "bundles" of feeds by category. These feeds will get
disproportionately high subscriber numbers at specific aggregators.

This prelude sets up what we think is a better statistic for measuring
market share: Engagement. Audience engagement, which is to say, people reading
feeds and people clicking on feeds – is how we’ve increasingly been
interpreting feed subscription numbers to better understand market
penetration.

Also worth reading are SEOmoz’s
Why Feed Tracking
is Hard
and Problogger’s

Why does my Feedburner Subscriber Count Fluctuate?


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Danny Sullivan
Contributor
Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land and MarTech, and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

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