Quirky Feedburner Feed Count? Here’s Why
August 16th, 2007 by CourtI used to get really frustrated with my feed count. I didn’t understand how I could lose 50+ subscribers in a 24 hour period. After looking into it a little more, I figured out several reasons why your feed count can fluctuate.
Feedburner Doesn’t Actually Show Total Subscriber Count
The Feedburner widget/chicklet doesn’t show the total amount of people that have subscribed to your site, it shows the amount of people that opened your feed yesterday. That’s why your feed count will likely drop on the weekends and on Monday. Less people will open your feed on Saturday and Sunday and those numbers will be reported on Sunday and Monday.
Sometimes Feed Reader Stats Are Lost
Every once in a while, stats from an entire feed reader are lost, or reported incorrectly for that day. Once I lost almost 70 subscribers overnight. At first I was trying to figure out what I had written that had driven that many people away. 
I figured out that I had exactly 0 subscribers that used Google Reader that day. Since Google Reader subscribers account for about 40% of my subscriber base, it’s easy to see that the Google Reader stats were lost for that day. Sure enough, the next day I had those 70 people back and a few extra subscribers on top of that.
Daily Fluctuations
Although the above two reasons will account for most of your feed count’s ups and downs, you will still have some regular, daily fluctuations. You might lose a few subscribers one day and pick up some extras the next. That is normal and isn’t anything to be worried about. Overall, most of you are experiencing the same ups and downs because the first two reasons will affect everyone the same.
Has anyone had an even bigger drop in RSS subscribers?
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August 16th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Yes, mine dropped 200 yesterday but they are all back today even though I still haven’t made a post since then. I think yesterday was just a glitch on feedburner’s part. I haven’t posted in a few days so I don’t know why those RSS readers would have all came back today.
August 16th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
I’m glad that your count went back up! When you emailed me it sounded like a total glitch, and I’m glad it was.
August 16th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
That explains a LOT. Thanks, those fluctuations have been giving me headaches.
August 16th, 2007 at 2:59 pm
You’re welcome Jeremy. I figure it out when my feed count mimicked some of the A-List blogs (to a lesser degree.)
August 16th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
Please give Darren credit for originally posting this information.
August 16th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
I would if I would have picked it up from Darren’s site. I honestly had no idea that Darren posted about it.
Tallfreak emailed both Darren and I yesterday because he lost some subscribers, and that’s why it was on both our minds:
http://tallfreak.com/2007/08/15/feedburner-count-dropped/
August 16th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
I have seen questions about this asked a lot lately, which is why I posted about the same thing a few days ago.
August 16th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
I dropped 100 at one time. That was really annoying.
August 16th, 2007 at 3:02 pm
I hate it when it happens, but at least they always come back!
August 16th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
I also recently discovered that the chicklet displays how many people actually opened your feed - I use to think it listed your total subscribers, so I was always worried when it dropped a huge amount or impressed when it rose.
This is something most people don’t know and most bloggers don’t discuss. Thanks for posting this information, Court!
August 16th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
I used to always worry about it too! Now I can almost always predict it.
It drops during the same days every week and grows the same days. It’s kind of cool actually if you know what’s going on.
August 16th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
It’s true, I emailed Court and Darren yesterday at the same time. They were both very prompt with their replies. I’m glad my question inspired blog entries about feedburner so that others can figure out why their counts fluctuate from day to day. I actually found Court’s answer and blog entry to be even more clear than Darren’s. Court talks about how Feedburner looks at how many readers accessed your feed the day before. Darren doesn’t even mention that.
August 17th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
Thanks for a really good question tallfreak! I had considered posting about it before - it has been on my list of possible posts for a month or so.
August 16th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Is there a way tell tell how many subscribers you actually have, even if they’re never being read, and sitting at the bottom of someone’s reader? I’m confuzzled now.
August 17th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
There’s no way that I know of Jeremy! I wish I knew how many total I have. You would have to think that it would usually be quite a bit more than what the count shows though.
August 16th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
How does FeedBurner handle email subscriptions? Do those numbers only display when subscribers open their emails? I suspect that those numbers show all the time, because I have one website which has email subscriptions only, and those numbers have never dropped like your talking about. Actually, I use FeedBlitz for that website, but the feed is burned at FeedBurner, so I suppose the numbers are also being read from FeedBurner. What do you think?
August 17th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
I’m not sure about that one! I wish that Feedburner had more information on the subject. I’ll look into it!
August 16th, 2007 at 7:40 pm
Beautiful peace of post again Court. As always.
I have a question, if you don’t mind. How does the url of your feed stay intact in feedburner?
I mean this post’s url is still intact = “http://courtneytuttle.com/2007/08/16/quirky-feedburner-feed-count-heres-why/” in feedburner. That is seo friendly.
But when I compare to johnchows’s post below
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/JohnChowDotCom/~3/144921426/
As you can see this is not seo friendl, it has numbers and ~ characters. If you know why? Or anyone know why? Thank you.
August 17th, 2007 at 9:21 pm
I haven’t done anything special to have my post appear like that! John’s URLs on his actual site are set up correctly though, and that’s the version that will actually get ranked!
August 18th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
Issue fixed. Thank you.
The problem was my wordpress software installed was the french version. I assume it was not compatible. Upgrading to 2.2.2 US version has just fixed the problem automatically. Just replaced the files and bang. Voilà! I might reconsider using feedburner again, and perhaps enjoy those numbers variations that you talk about here. :o)
August 16th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
My subscriber count fluctuates quite a bit. It isn’t as high as I want it to be, that is why I’m trying to persuade people to subscribe by optimizing more popular posts.
August 17th, 2007 at 9:23 pm
Mine does too! Today it’s at 293 and it was at 249 last Saturday. Tomorrow, it will probably be down a little again.
August 17th, 2007 at 5:23 am
Feedburner is a very useful tool IMO, though I still think it is a little bit of an ego-massage for most people…
August 17th, 2007 at 9:24 pm
I think we all want to see a big number there.
August 20th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
It’s annoying that it doesn’t show the amount of people that have subscribed, although I know there reasoning for doing it the way they have.
A way of telling how many people clicked on the RSS button would be to set up a goal in Google analytics, perhaps that would make a good post? I might write about that in my blog next.
December 5th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
I would really also like the feature where it shows your TOTAL amount of suscribers.
Nonetheless , very informative post .
Thanks
February 21st, 2008 at 5:11 am
Thanks for the info. I dropped 250 subscribers today and I was shocked. Luckily they didn’t count Google Feeds.
Thanks for the info.