Startling Stats! Google Reports RSS Subscribers

Posted by Laura Bergells

February 19, 2007

If you take measuring internet marketing results seriously, Google has great news. The company is now reporting the number of people who subscribe to your RSS feed with Google Reader. This greatly improves the accuracy of measuring your internet marketing results.

I watched my subscriber stats increase overnight by an awesome 25%. Turns out that Google Reader and Google Personalized Homepage are popular feedreaders. Who would have guessed that?

Many tech bloggers still claim that Bloglines is the most popular feedreader. And while I think Bloglines is an excellent feedreader with many features that Google does NOT have, I cannot help but think that those of us who run non-tech blogs are not really attracting a Bloglines-kind-of-subscriber base.

Google, after all, has much (much) bigger brand awareness than Bloglines. Ask an average non-tech web user if they have ever heard of Bloglines, and they might say, “I think so.”

Then ask them if they have ever heard of Google. That darn Google is everywhere! Pop entertainment culture has embraced the company. How many movies and TV shows have you seen recently that mention Google as a plot point? Even this Sunday’s Dilbert used Google as a punchline.

Google is part of pop culture.

Bloglines? Not so much.

Those folks who “might” have heard about Bloglines? They probably have heard about blogs and blogging, and simply think that Bloglines is yet another kind of blog!

So guess what? If someone kind of recognizes “Bloglines” — chances are they just recognize the term “Blog” within the company name. They have no idea that Bloglines is a popular feedreader among the technorati.

Because while “Bloglines” is not a part of pop culture, “Blogs” and “Blogging” have become pop culture terms.

When the local TV weather guy has his own blog….when several sitcoms mention blogging as a punchline… you know that blogging has gone mainstream.

It means that if you haven’t already, you need to look closely at blogging and RSS as part of your internet marketing plan.

All the traditional metrics — visitors, page views, clickpath, length of time on site — these are still important.

But now you need to measure and analyze “RSS subscribers” — your blog subscribers — as well.