20 Jan
So my feeds have now moved over to Google, but with their supposedly “more accurate reporting method”, my feed values have dropped significantly. My feed count for Daily Eco Tips was 108 before the move, and it dived to 78 (a 27.7% drop); my feed count for EnviroGadget was 165 before the move, diving to 112 after the move (a 32.1% drop); my feed count for PowerDosh was 43 before the move, and now 23 after the move (a 46.5% drop).
So those massive drops cannot be just down to Google’s more accurate logging methods, even though the numbers are roughly consistent. I noticed a 30-50% drop on all of my RSS feeds, so I get the impression that Google’s measurements are too harsh compared to Feedburners older metrics.
The reason why I say this is if there was a RSS feed count that was particularly high, it’d be on just a minority of the sites. Perhaps due to lots of scrapers hiding their user-agents. A consistent drop across all of the feeds suggests a uniform change in the metrics.
Regardless of the drop, the numbers are still lower than my targets for 2009. However, due to some interesting changes, I’m hoping that the rate of growth for my sites will increase exponentially.
Have you seen a drop in your RSS count with the transition from Feedburner to Google?

12 Responses for "Drop in RSS Feed count with Google Feedburner Transistion"
The captcha image in google is too difficult to read. I prefer the old feedburner
I have lost well over 70% of my feedburner count in the last couple of days. I havn’t heard anyone give a decent explanation why yet…
I haven’t switched yet, but now I’m not sure if I want to . . . Google does own the internet though . .
I haven’t done the transition yet, but I read from other blogs that their feed count was lower.
Hi Dan,
I agree that there’s something strange about the numbers when moving across systems. My blog had ~30 subscribers on FeedBurner, and it’s now sitting at 17 on Google’s system.
I would love to understand how accurate these figures actually are.
I wouldn’t worry too much about the actual numbers - it’s all relative. Focus on increasing the number, use the new Google figures to base your targets on.
I think you’re right John, it’s just a little annoying!
Dan
I did the transition and lost half of my readers almost overnight.
But now I am back to normal figures and google subscribers are back again.
Hope it will be the same for you. Find this blog interesting and will get back for more !
(came via BlogCatalog)
Hi Edouard
I think that I’m seeing some stabilisation and return to the numbers I had before now.
Great to hear from you and thanks for mentioning how you found PowerDosh!
Dan
first i lost about %20 of my feebburner count, but after few days i noticed it back to normal again
I’ll confess I’ve been lazy and only just set up a feed on my site. Now I just need to get some subscribers, how do you promote yours Dan?
Hi John.
I’ve found that being involved in forums and blogs in a related niche have done wonders for traffic. The real boost that I’ve seen to my RSS subscriber count is using the following plugin:
http://richardkmiller.com/word.....h-godin-do
Which puts a box at the top of the page saying hello, telling the user in a sentence what the site is about, and then helping them to subscribe. Worked wonders for http://www.envirogadget.com and http://www.dailyecotips.com (visit and see what I mean).
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