http://mwgblog.com/archives/2006/10/07/5000-subscribers/ Michael W. Geoghegan's Weblog Sun, 23 Nov 2008 17:24:58 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 http://mwgblog.com/archives/2006/10/07/5000-subscribers/#comment-36514 Stats You Can Trust at MWGblog Thu, 15 Mar 2007 06:52:24 +0000 http://mwgblog.com/archives/2006/10/07/5000-subscribers/#comment-36514 [...] Boy those Feedburner stats move! A few weeks back I was on the Podcast Brothers and the topic of Feedburner stats came up. We discussed the fact that I had seen an overnight reduction of 80% in the “supposed” subscriber count on my blog. Apparently a few listeners were curious so here is the screenshot of the “Feed Stats” for MWGblog. As I posted back in October, Feedburner was reporting a subscriber count north of 5000 for this humble little blog. That number continued to increase to 6200 and then in early January, bam… overnight it went to 1100. Now frankly, I never trusted the 6000+ number. It looked great, but something in my gut just said that was way too high. Conversely, I now wonder if I should trust the new number. It has continued to increase to just over 2200 as I write this. This brings up a few interesting points. First I’d be ecstatic if the number was 20, but I would like to have a number that was at least in the realm of “accurate”. (Lets say at least in the ballpark.) I realize that feed subscriber count is not a science, but when you see swings this dramatic it does nothing but undermine all credibility. Also, when I do see those Feedburner buttons on other sites with subscriber counts I now tend to think “yeah, right…” That is the problem - loss of credibility. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not down on Feedburner, heck it is free. Since using their service, other than the stats hiccup mentioned here, it has been fantastic. Also I did email them, and while no specific cause was given they did point to this post abut Rojo. But still, 80%? [...] [...] Boy those Feedburner stats move! A few weeks back I was on the Podcast Brothers and the topic of Feedburner stats came up. We discussed the fact that I had seen an overnight reduction of 80% in the “supposed” subscriber count on my blog. Apparently a few listeners were curious so here is the screenshot of the “Feed Stats” for MWGblog. As I posted back in October, Feedburner was reporting a subscriber count north of 5000 for this humble little blog. That number continued to increase to 6200 and then in early January, bam… overnight it went to 1100. Now frankly, I never trusted the 6000+ number. It looked great, but something in my gut just said that was way too high. Conversely, I now wonder if I should trust the new number. It has continued to increase to just over 2200 as I write this. This brings up a few interesting points. First I’d be ecstatic if the number was 20, but I would like to have a number that was at least in the realm of “accurate”. (Lets say at least in the ballpark.) I realize that feed subscriber count is not a science, but when you see swings this dramatic it does nothing but undermine all credibility. Also, when I do see those Feedburner buttons on other sites with subscriber counts I now tend to think “yeah, right…” That is the problem - loss of credibility. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not down on Feedburner, heck it is free. Since using their service, other than the stats hiccup mentioned here, it has been fantastic. Also I did email them, and while no specific cause was given they did point to this post abut Rojo. But still, 80%? [...]

]]> http://mwgblog.com/archives/2006/10/07/5000-subscribers/#comment-14125 Rick Umali Thu, 12 Oct 2006 00:52:20 +0000 http://mwgblog.com/archives/2006/10/07/5000-subscribers/#comment-14125 Congrats! Congrats!

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