Google Desktop is inflating your RSS subscribers
Written by: The Tutor on Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007
Posted to: Blogging, Desktop Search, FeedBurner, Feedfetcher
3 comments, add yours!Posted to: Blogging, Desktop Search, FeedBurner, Feedfetcher
Graywolf figured it out:
If someone has Google Desktop installed and is using the web clips a bit of background voodoo happens. Web clips autodiscovers RSS feeds and ads them from any site you visit.
Patrick at BlogStorm explains it a bit more:
Google Desktop auto subscribes you to the RSS feed of every site you visit. On Sunday BlogStorm was on the Digg front page so its easy to see how the subscriber numbers have fared since then. On Saturday blogstorm.co.uk had 997 subscribers, this jumped to 1317 on Sunday and fell back down to 1135 subscribers on Monday.
I’m a little surpised at this as it totally screws with everyone’s subscriber numbers. Why would Google do this? Graywolf might be onto something when he says:
Get the webmasters and web publishers to see an advantage to getting more people using Google’s products
What do you think, is Google being a little shady?
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Share this post! 3 comments, add yours!
I think most feed readers report figures in a similar way - if you access your feed reader one day then you count as a reader, if you don’t then you won’t.
Since Google Desktop is displaying the feed to a viewer I think it can legitimately count as being “read”.
Its important for bloggers to look at why their stats jump up on occasions like this so they are prepared for when they drop down again.
> I think it can legitimately count as being “read”.
It can be, sure, but is Google doing that automatically to help the user or to help themselves?
[…] Google Desktop is inflating your RSS subscribersWeb clips autodiscovers RSS feeds and ads them from any site you visit. (Google Tutor Oct 3 2007) […]