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    • January 28, 2006

    Are Feedburner Stats Accurate?

    Written on January 28th, 2006 by Vince Chan ::

    I loaded up the site today and was surprised to see my Feedburner circulation stats at 0 readers. So I quickly logged into Feedburner and was confused to see Live Circulation stats at 23 readers.

    A quick hunt for the definition of circulation on Feedburner reveals this:

    An approximate measure of the number of individuals for whom your feed has been requested in the last 24 hours.

    I don’t think 24 hours is a long enough timeframe to decide if a user has decided to unsubscribe from your feed right? It may work for the big boys, but again the amateurs who don’t post frequently, or who don’t garner enough traffic are left out in the cold?

    I also see wild fluctuations with other sites that use the Feedburner button (the one to the right of my profile picture). Most prominently, I’ve been noticing that Darren’s Feedburner stats have been fluctuating from the 1000s to 3000s and back down to the 2000s. Darren clued me in to a WordPress Plugin for Feedburner that helps to reflect more accurate stats for reader circulation, but now I wonder. Hmmm…

    Update: Within 15 minutes of posting, my Feedburner button is back up to 25 readers! And my Feedburner feed is not displaying this post. Am I reading too much into this? Does Feedburner act like a Big Brother?

    Update #2: I was so stupid. This post was set on PRIVATE while I was drafting it. That’s why Feedburner did not display it in the feed!



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    4 Responses to “Are Feedburner Stats Accurate?”

    1. Alex Morganis Says:

      I had the same problem! Mine was at 0 too!

    2. Rick Klau Says:

      Hi guys -

      The counter being set to zero was a byproduct of our nightly stats roll-up process taking a bit longer to run than normal. Details are here:

      http://forums.feedburner.com/viewtopic.php?p=11431#11431

      No data was lost, it just took a little longer for the numbers to reflect in the circulation number.

      Thanks for using FeedBurner.

      –Rick

      —-
      Rick Klau
      VP, Business Development
      FeedBurner - http://www.feedburner.com
      rickk@feedburner.com
      AIM/Y!/Skype: RickKlau
      office: 312.756.0022 x2012
      direct: 312.239-0727
      cell: 630.362.8911

    3. Vince Chan Says:

      Thanks for the comment Rick!

      You’re proving that Feedburner is doing a real good job! A real class act! The explanation was much appreciated!

    4. Eric Scalf Says:

      Feedburner has issues, occasionally. Every time I’ve noticed something, though, it’s been sorted out and fixed within two hours.

      Also, you may want to install the Feedburner Feed Replacement plugin. It allows you to replace your /feed and other automatic wordpress feeds with your feedburner feed. Redirects it, seamlessly. A big problem with a lot of bloggers is that they allow subscriptions on both feedburner and regular feed. Redirecting the regular feeds to feedburner helps you get a more accurate idea of how many readers you have, along with the ability to use some of feedburner’s unique features.

      -Eric

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