Written on August 16th, 2007 at 09:08 am by Darren Rowse
Why does my Feedburner Subscriber Count Fluctuate?
- Why does my Feedburner subscriber count fluctuate so much?
- Are people unsubscribing and subscribing as much as my Feedburner counter says?
- I notice your Feedburner counter goes up and down each day - why?
- My RSS Subscriber Counter Goes Down Every Weekend - Why?
Over the last week I’ve been asked these and similar questions about Feedburner subscriber numbers a total of 7 times. Each time I’ve muddled through an answer to the questioner, thinking I knew the answer but not being sure.
So this morning when I woke to the question twice more in my inbox I thought I’d go straight to the font of all knowledge at Feedburner - Rick Klau (Feedburner’s Vice President of Publisher Services) and ask him for an official explanation of fluctuating Feedburner subscription numbers.
Here’s how Rick answered the question:
When we report a subscriber number, that represents the total number of individuals who had the feed requested on their behalf on that day.
Most of these subscribers fall into one of two groups:
- those using a stand-alone feed reader
- those using a web-based feed reader
In the case of stand-alone feed readers, that user has an application running on their computer which fetches the feed repeatedly throughout the day. We look at characteristics of those requests, and differentiate between repeated requests from the same person (as indicated by regular polling intervals, consistent IP addresses, and common user agents) and different requests (where one or more of the previous data points vary).
In the case of web-based feed readers (My Yahoo, Google Reader, Bloglines, Pageflakes, etc.), those services retrieve the feed repeatedly throughout the day, but do so on behalf of multiple people. Almost all of these services report to us how many of their users are subscribed to the feed. At the end of the day, we tally up how many stand-alone feed readers are subscribed, and add them to the web-based users. The end result is the total subscriber number we report. (I’m leaving a few details out; see below for a more complete answer.)
The fluctuations are almost always due to people using stand-alone computers who don’t turn their computer on, or don’t load their feed reader on a given day. If their feed reader doesn’t ask for the feed that day, we don’t see them, and consequently don’t include them as a subscriber. (note from Darren - this is why on weekends numbers tend to go down as a result of less people checking their feed reader).
Other explanations are when a site gets Dugg - large spikes in traffic, at least when some of the visitors are using older versions of browsers, may result in us being unable to differentiate between browser accesses of the feed and the browser’s feed reader accessing the feed. A more detailed explanation of this phenomenon is here - look for my answer to the question asking about spikes from getting Dugg.
Finally, for a more comprehensive look at the various components of a subscriber report, we did a case study last year on TechCrunch. It should provide even more context for the hows and whys of subscriber calculations (and fluctuations). It also makes some important comments on “Reach”. Unlike the subscriber number, which may be representative of people who indicated an interest in your content but who do not actually read it, Reach reports on just the items that were viewed in aggregators or the clicks that drove traffic back to the publisher’s site. As a result, it represents a much more accurate picture of the engagement a feed’s audience enjoys, while the subscriber number represents the total audience who’s expressed an interest in the content.
58 Responses to “Why does my Feedburner Subscriber Count Fluctuate?”
Christina
August 16th, 2007 9:20 am
I frequent a lot of blogs and use Bloglines to sub to RSS feeds. As I added another blog to my feeds just today I checked back to see if their counter updated from 29 to 30 subscribers afterwards. It didn’t. This incident made me wonder about how accurate the counters are, when they update, and how they work exactly.
Thanks so much!
Greg J. Smith
August 16th, 2007 9:33 am
This was quite helpful, thanks!
Stavanger
August 16th, 2007 9:47 am
Very good information, I use shrook on OS X. So now I understand if I don’t turn on my computer one day someone’s feed count is dropping. More reasons to be on the computer ;)
YouNeed2See
August 16th, 2007 10:02 am
Good explanation Darren. I notice when I get dugg I usually have about 300 more subscribers which gradually goes down the next few days.
I think it may have to do with the people who view your RSS feed but don’t actually subscribe to it, and until FeedBurner realizes there’s no more ping, it removes the user.
Jeremy Steele
August 16th, 2007 10:05 am
Sometimes a splog might pick up on your feed and also cause it to go way up. A while back one got hold of mine and subscription numbers shot wayyyy up for a few days.
YouNeed2See
August 16th, 2007 10:05 am
I’ll also point out that on your homepage under “Recently at the Blog”, it hasn’t updated to this post (it still shows your Heatmap post). I don’t know if this is on purpose or a bug, but I figured I’d let you know.
Tallfreak
August 16th, 2007 10:09 am
Thanks so much for posting this. I’ve been so confused about my feedburner count today.
Melissa F.
August 16th, 2007 10:17 am
Thanks for the info. I have often wondered…
WizCoder
August 16th, 2007 10:22 am
I wish that some to clean up the counter so its reflect its real number.
jhay
August 16th, 2007 10:23 am
So that’s what is going on. Now things are more clear for me.
Matt Wolfe
August 16th, 2007 10:46 am
I was wondering the same thing! Thanks a lot for helping clear that up.
Leo
August 16th, 2007 11:06 am
Awesome job, Darren. That’s why you are at the top of your field — you go the extra mile and make things clear for your readers.
As you know, I’m one of the people who emailed you with one of those feed questions … and now, things are much less confusing for me.
Brian Purkiss
August 16th, 2007 11:24 am
Very insightful.
We went though this, well, sometimes alarming, experiance the other day over at RandomJabber.com.
It is most interesting and a very good thing to remember.
Thanks!
Guillermo
August 16th, 2007 11:24 am
Have you read my mind? I swear I was thinking about this same thing today! Thanks for the post!
mariam
August 16th, 2007 11:32 am
Ahh, thank you! I just thought the readers were being fickle! Is there also any reason for Feedburner’s Site Stats? It keeps on saying no visitors but it shows up on Google Analytics?
Emma
August 16th, 2007 11:49 am
Thanks Darren. I always wondered about that. It makes total sense now. I can always count on Problogger to have timely answers to things floating around in my head. (I had JUST checked my feedburner stats before I read this article!)
Mario
August 16th, 2007 1:39 pm
I have experienced the same thing but your explanation makes perfect sense.
Carl of PseudoPower
August 16th, 2007 2:17 pm
I had the same thoughts on feedburner.
Your thoughts on why are similar to the ones I already have been thinking of.
Thanks for the post!
Carl Zetterlund
Allen Stern
August 16th, 2007 2:36 pm
Darren - your post comes at a perfect time to complement my post from 2 days ago asking if RSS Subscribers is the new Hits?
http://www.centernetworks.com/are-rss-subscribers-equal-to-hits
Reach might be more meaningful but frankly I don’t think showing these numbers is of any real meaning.
Some have commented on CN that they like sites that have higher counts as it makes them more trustworthy somehow. I disagree, take each site as it comes.
Marko
August 16th, 2007 3:15 pm
Thanks for the info. This thing bothered me for a while….
John
August 16th, 2007 4:41 pm
Well some of the doubts about feedburner has been cleared.
Andy Beard
August 16th, 2007 5:12 pm
This isn’t 100% accurate
They also sometimes have bugs that mean that some data isn’t included.
As a very specific example, yesterday they for some reason didn’t include my email subscribers within the total, which means my total subscribers dropped by around 190 and rebounded again today.
You can spot this kind of error fairly easily by looking at the breakdown of who is using your feed on a day by day basis.
p.s. your top bullet in Firefox seems to be inline with your post header information. You might need to add some “clearing” in the CSS.
Sarah
August 16th, 2007 6:14 pm
Thanks Darren, this is extremely helpful… I had classified this issue as a mystery for a while now! Mystery resolved :)
Bachelorium
August 16th, 2007 6:26 pm
Same, I’ve got an error with the first bullet point in Firefox
Skelliewag.org
August 16th, 2007 6:27 pm
Hi Darren, just wanted to let you know that the first bullet point in the post has been squished over the right-hand border of the post, just to the bottom right of the comment count, and half of each word is buried under the column to the right. I’m using Firefox 2.
A Million Dollar Girl
August 16th, 2007 6:56 pm
Good answer to a question a lot of bloggers are always making, I included of course.
Thanks 4 the info.
Best regards ;)
Sue
August 16th, 2007 7:41 pm
Honestly, Darren, you do read minds. I was just wondering why mine fluctuates so much. And where everyone went since yesterday. Thanks for this very informative post.
ugyen
August 16th, 2007 9:44 pm
Good answer Darren, This is true, my readers get the fluctuation daily.
Ashok
August 16th, 2007 11:14 pm
I was also thinking something similar the reason of fluctuation.
Transcriptionist
August 16th, 2007 11:27 pm
I used to wonder about these inflows and outflows at many sites, many times. This article is really an eyeopener!
Paul
August 16th, 2007 11:28 pm
/me raises hand for being one of ‘the seven’ who asked the question.
I did admit it was a rather mundane question to be asking in the first place, to Darren’s credit he emailed me back the same night… When do you sleep man!?
Cheers for the full explanation!
Modern Worker
August 17th, 2007 1:39 am
Helpful info, Darren. I’ve been confused by my fluctuations before, but no longer.
Hamlet Batista
August 17th, 2007 2:11 am
I commented about this on Seomoz a couple of weeks ago. I not only explained the reason for the problem, but I also proposed a solution. Let me know what you think. Here is the link http://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-feed-tracking-is-hard#jtc31119
Denise Palmer
August 17th, 2007 3:21 am
I actually was trying NOT to think about this insanity last week….getting quite aggravated at the fluctuations.
I read this post and it made it CLEAR AS MUD on the first read….but a read or two later……I’m feeling the “love” again for feedburner!
Thanks Darren! I’m really enjoying your posts!
SingForHim@RealLife
August 17th, 2007 5:45 am
Thanks for this. I was wondering why I lost 10 subscribers a few days ago, and they are now back.
Marc Eilbeck
August 17th, 2007 6:13 am
great post this is one ive been asking myself for a while
Jason
August 17th, 2007 12:00 pm
I’m still not clear about why they say digg users are using old browsers. Those who know how to digg or bury must have known how to install latest version, isn’t it?
B. Durant
August 17th, 2007 6:53 pm
I don’t get why they don’t count a subscribed feed as a feed even if someone doesn’t check it that particular day?
In reference to - “If their feed reader doesn’t ask for the feed that day, we don’t see them, and consequently don’t include them as a subscriber. ”
Oh well, great information nevertheless, thanks.
抽筋儿
August 17th, 2007 7:24 pm
I’m wondering that whether I could translate this article into Chinese for Chinese blogosphere.May I ?
jill
August 17th, 2007 7:39 pm
I have no luck at all with feedburner subscribers..whats the big deal..it seems once an e-mail is envolved people just get werry,I guess I dont blame them but I give mine out all day long..Google alerts bloggers you name it my email address should be queen spam..Anyway great blog ..love your work..oh yea new design rocks…jill
analogstuff
August 17th, 2007 9:02 pm
Thanks for the information about feedburner Darren.
I always had this question in mind about feedburner subscribers but now i came to know the answer from your article.
Stephen Downes
August 17th, 2007 9:09 pm
> Almost all of these services report to us how many of their users are subscribed to the feed.
This is pretty misleading.
What the services do is include the number of subscribers as part of their request header. This information then appears in your server log.
This is done for everyone, not just Feedburner. They are not reporting ‘to Feedburner’ how many subscribers you have. They report to every web server they access.
See http://blog.velospace.org/?p=15
Paul B
August 17th, 2007 10:41 pm
At last a definitive answer, thanks for going to the effort of asking. Appreciate it.
elamb
August 18th, 2007 12:01 am
Feedburner gives me steady traffic. I guess I should get smart on it.
Vanessa
August 19th, 2007 8:16 am
I did a search inquiry and later came here. I’ve posted a link to this subject, much obliged for your digging and going to the source for the answer. Also like the new design, especially the comments section, not as busy. I have always learned so much from the comments along with the always timely articles. Much thanks.
Cuckoo
August 30th, 2007 4:58 am
I knew the reason of fluctuation. I was more interested to know if we can find out who all are subscribing to our blogs.
Anthony Lawrence
September 12th, 2007 3:50 am
In the context of your other article about full or partial feeds is this interesting quote about reach:
“Unlike the subscriber number, which may be representative of people who indicated an interest in your content but who do not actually read it, Reach reports on just the items that were viewed in aggregators or the clicks that drove traffic back to the publisher’s site. As a result, it represents a much more accurate picture of the engagement a feed’s audience enjoys, while the subscriber number represents the total audience who’s expressed an interest in the content.”
Shawn
October 10th, 2007 9:57 am
One day, my feedburner count was at 6 readers. Then, the next day, it was dfown to 2. Finally dropping to 1. Then back steadily at 2. I thought that was weird too
David Bradley
November 4th, 2007 7:54 pm
This is basically what I suspected was going on. However, this week I’ve held high at 2700 give or take a dozen all week then today, count has dropped to just over 2000. I checked a few other blogs and they all seem to have taken this big hit. Is that just the Saturday effect or has something bigger happened this weekend because it’s November ;-)
db
Anthony Lawrence
November 4th, 2007 9:13 pm
Well, here on the east coast of the US, we had a big storm.. I’m sure a lot of people had outages or just shut off to avoid crashes..
shawn
November 13th, 2007 11:30 am
I kinda wondered the same thing too
Geoff R
December 22nd, 2007 8:14 am
I have always found it peculiar about how people obsess over the fluctuations in their feed counts. Personally, I find it too much of a hassle to worry about the natural changes that occur each week, so I usually track my progress via the weekly average.
Still, thanks for finally laying it out plain for everyone to see. This is something all feedburner users should read.
Greg
January 14th, 2008 12:39 pm
Very informative post! I checked my FeedBurner today and noticed that I had quite a drop in subscribers. As I was searching for why this had occurred, I stumbled across this post, and now all of my questions are answered. Thanks!
Michael
April 12th, 2008 7:53 am
Excellent post, thanks!
I just started a blog with feedburner stats on there. I am still pretty confused how it works. Since the site is only a few weeks old, my numbers are small (ok… really small) but the advantage is that I should be able to see them change easier.
For example… I have 7 email subscribers, but on my page it shows I have a total of 3 readers….
It is sort of confusing to me. Thought maybe it was only updated once a day or something.
Seth
April 18th, 2008 11:36 am
Yea we have this problem all the time. Now our subscriber count is just not working right at all.
Noobpreneur
May 6th, 2008 5:23 am
Darren,
Thanks for answering my life long question :D
Cheers!
Ajith Edassery
June 3rd, 2008 5:03 pm
It’s not possible to get realistic ‘live feed users’ count as feedburner mostly show 1 day delayed information. I wonder why they can’t do something like last 1 week average and show that.
I personally feel that showing total number or subscriptions or current one week average will make more sense
Ajith
sonal
June 17th, 2008 5:44 pm
Hi, Does feedburner only show subscribers that have subscribed to your post on that very day?
because i know some 5 friends who have subscribed to my feed, but the feedburner shows me 0 or 1 depending on how may have subscribed on ‘that’ very day!
*confused*
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