Weird Spikes In RSS Subscibers
Written By themikehaynes on Feb. 21, 2008.
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I've been having plenty of ups and downs as it relates to my subscriber count through Feedburner. While I had roughly 20 or so readers at one point, it quickly shot down to 12 and then 11. This morning, I checked my count and it's plummeted to 6.
I really don't know if this is because people are unsubscribing or if there's something else going on here. Anyone have anything similar happen to them?

Scrivs
Written Feb. 21, 2008 / Report /
Well you don't really have that much of a sample to work with, but on a site I used to run that had a couple thousand subscribers I found that whenever I got major linkage the subscribers' count would go up significantly. After some research I found that it was because Firefox users get shown as subscribers due to the Live Feed feature of the software. Not sure if this plays any role in your case, but it could be something.
superrats
Written Feb. 21, 2008 / Report /
Feedburner stats for Feb 20th are incomplete. From their forum it seems the Google reader numbers might not have been included or something along those lines. They mentioned that the reporting of those figures would be restored on Friday. Something like this happens every couple of months with Feedburner, where it looks like half of your subscribers unsubscribed only to be a glitch of some kind.
Subscriber count is more of a subscriber estimate. There's a lot of reasons why it's not a hard count.
Cas
Written Feb. 21, 2008 / Report /
Mine's been up and down like a yo-yo lately, though I don't check all that often. I did have a small heart attack when I checked this morning and saw 50 had been lopped off my count - I'm not quite up there with Scrivs and his thousands, but when a quarter of my subscribers disappear I do have to wonder if something beyond my control is happening.
Easy answer? Feedburner has its hiccups. It's known for it. Breathe through the pain, wait a few days to see if it rights itself, and if you're still in stat-checking mode, instal another way of checking as a back-up.
Josh
Written Feb. 21, 2008 / Report /
Glad to know I'm not the only one who had that happen today. About half of my subscribers disappeared between yesterday and today. :)
dreamweaver
Written Feb. 21, 2008 / Report /
Ditto here, though I wouldn't have checked if I hadn't seen this note anyway. At least I know that my post about my Obsessive-Compulsive Quilter didn't offend all my readers and send them running for the hills. ;)
cooper
Written Feb. 21, 2008 / Report /
That's really not much of a change a if the people do not open their readers for a certain period of time they aren't counted.
Chris24
Written Feb. 22, 2008 / Report /
When I looked at Feedburner stats yesterday, my stats went down from 125 to 85, another blog went down 100 -> 85, and another from 1200 -> 500. While, on the same day, Mashable's RSS readers were up +19000 that day, too.
Today, my stats are back up to 125, the other blog is back at 100, and the other is up to 1150. Mashable's stats are also down -15000 today. FeedBurner's been all over the place recently... :/
themikehaynes
Written Feb. 22, 2008 / Report /
Mine are slowly making their way back up.
...not that I had much to begin with.