Understanding feed count fluctuations

The Feedburner users out there will probably have already noticed the fluctuations that their feed count suffer over the time. Moreover, if you pay attention you will notice that during week days when you pump many posts the feed count will peak, while on weekends and on days that you do not post that number will decline (sometimes heavily, for the despair of the blogger).

There is simple explanation for this fact, though. Feedburner delivers your feed to a myriad of RSS readers. There are basically two types of RSS readers: web-based readers like Bloglines or MyYahoo and on-demand readers like FireFox Live Bookmarks. The web-based readers will pull your feed whether the subscriber opens his reader page or not, hence why the feed count for web-based readers is stable over the time. On-demand readers, however, will only be counted if the user actually accesses the feed on a particular day.

Here is a quote from Eric Olson, responsible of the Publisher Services for Feedburner:

We can only track the subscriber we see in a given day. If someone doesn’t open their feedreader or live bookmarks than we can’t count them that day and won’t count them on your stats.

Daniel Scocco on January 29, 2007 Subscribe to our RSS Feed

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16 Responses to “Understanding feed count fluctuations”

engtech on January 29th, 2007 11:26 am

I wouldn’t worry about it. Realistically I only see a less than 15% swing on the weekends versus weekdays. I honestly don’t think anyone but me would be paying enough attention to even notice it.
Daniel on January 29th, 2007 11:31 am

engtech, you have a valid point.

the main idea of my post was to explain the why the fluctiations happen in the first place
Allen.H on January 29th, 2007 11:41 am

My blog’s biggest peek was at 1300 subscribers, today it averages 550-800,

Allen.H
Daniel on January 29th, 2007 12:41 pm

Allen,

I had not considered a case where there is a sharp readership drop, and you are right.

I guess, as Engtech said, that the day to day fluctuations do not bother anyone after all, hence why I removed the last part of the post.

Thanks for correcting me on this one guys, those are the benefits of writing a blog as opposed to a book.
Ian Delaney on January 29th, 2007 12:47 pm

It’s rarely much more than a quarter of that normally. That’s not a fluctuation: it’s a weird spike.

By providing external validation, you’re reassuring potential sponsors.
Ian Delaney on January 29th, 2007 12:48 pm

sorry - I see you’ve already addressed this…
Daniel on January 29th, 2007 12:53 pm

no problems Ian, I agree 100% with what you guys said.
Jim on January 29th, 2007 5:22 pm

Thanks for the simple–yet previously unknown to me–explanation!
sujan patel on January 30th, 2007 11:03 pm

I’ve always wondered why my feed count is lower on weekends. Thanks for clearing it up.
Aaron Bobrink on February 2nd, 2007 2:21 am

Nice to know this about feedburner. My blog is too new to have fluctuations in its count, but I have noticed it in other blogs.

Keep up the good work Daniel!
listikal on June 4th, 2007 10:53 am

Excellent post on the fluctuation. It seems like I’ve read this before, but this really nails it on the head.
Tom Johnson on October 6th, 2007 10:20 am

Thanks for the post. I’ve been wondering about the reasons for Feedburner’s fluctuations for months!
SEO Genius on June 29th, 2008 2:48 pm

Great post, i have been wondering this for sometime now