Re: Tracking your RSS subscribers

> Does anyone know a way to track your feed subscribers.  How many
> subscriptions, how often they look at it etc.

There are several ways to do it.  None are "active" in that they're designed
and exactly accurate.  But they're a reasonably good way to gauge use of a
feed.

When publishing a feed make sure the links you use are something you can
track in your logs as having been used in the RSS feeds.

Don't just use:
http://example.com/pages/1.html

Use some that's trackable:
http://example.com/rss.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%2Fpages%2F1.html

The cgi could be customized further based on available CPU and tracking
needs.  Note that systems like Moreover have been doing this for ages.

Have that cgi program log the request and then redirect to the destination
page.  This will tell you the time of use, the source IP and, perhaps most
importantly, what source feed item drew them to that landing page.  The
latter is perhaps the most telling bit of information.  Here you have the
chance to see just how many readers of the feed were driven back to your
site based on the individual item content (title & description).

There's also the old "web bug" idea of using an embedded gif image in the
content.  Many reader programs strip out or don't display images so it's not
usually a method I recommend.

As for client-side tracking, actually knowing what they read locally without
visiting a web site, there is no reliable method.  Nor should there be.  The
users have resisted the notion of this QUITE strongly and for good reason.
If something's compelling enough that people act on it and follow links
that's informative enough.  To think there's value in further invasion of
their privacies is arrogant, at best.  I'm sure others don't view it quite
the same way but fundamentally it's really none of our business.  If we
can't draw them to read a website or to share links to them with others then
we're not making content that interests them.  No amount of abusing their
privacy will change that.

-Bill Kearney
Syndic8.com




 
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