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Rick Klau
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1 year ago
in 2007/10/15/google-reader-stats-are-bullshit-with-proof/ on Mashable - The Social Media Guide
Hi everyone -
FeedBurner separates out subscribers, item views, and clickthroughs in each publisher's feed analytics so that we can give publishers a good overview of their audience and how much activity their feed is actually generating. In a post we wrote back in February ( http://blogs.feedburner.com/feedburner/archives...), we talked about the impact of default feeds on reported numbers, as well as the differences in what each web-based reader reports. (That is to say, a Yahoo "subscriber" is not necessarily the same as a Bloglines "subscriber" or a Google "subscriber".)
Beyond the basic subscription metric, we measure activity and audience engagement which includes item views (whenever a feed item is read in an HTML-capable reader) and clickthroughs (back to a publisher's site) - both of which are additional indicators of actual feed consumption.
Hope that helps,
Rick
Google (FeedBurner)
FeedBurner separates out subscribers, item views, and clickthroughs in each publisher's feed analytics so that we can give publishers a good overview of their audience and how much activity their feed is actually generating. In a post we wrote back in February ( http://blogs.feedburner.com/feedburner/archives...), we talked about the impact of default feeds on reported numbers, as well as the differences in what each web-based reader reports. (That is to say, a Yahoo "subscriber" is not necessarily the same as a Bloglines "subscriber" or a Google "subscriber".)
Beyond the basic subscription metric, we measure activity and audience engagement which includes item views (whenever a feed item is read in an HTML-capable reader) and clickthroughs (back to a publisher's site) - both of which are additional indicators of actual feed consumption.
Hope that helps,
Rick
Google (FeedBurner)
1 reply
Here's my interpretation of what you're saying there:
1. Feedburner does not have standardization for what counts as a subscriber, particularly on default feeds.
2. You do have slightly more accurate metrics available, but all these are hidden within the user's account. These include clickthroughs.
3. It's the *inaccurate* stats (the subscriber counts) that are being used to compare blogs.