How to ensure that your FeedBurner stats are correct
I publish my blog feed using FeedBurner. And I always used to think that the statistics shown in my FeedBurner account for the number of subscribers is correct. Well, as it turns out I was completely wrong. And your statistics shown in your FeedBurner account could be wrong as well (especially if you are using a WordPress blog).
Here’s how to make sure that your stats are correct:
First, why are the stats wrong?
There is nothing wrong with FeedBurner, but it still may not be giving you the right number of subscribers to your blog. It only gives you the number of subscribers that have subscribed using the FeedBurner feed link (in my case: http://feeds.feeduburner.com/HabituallyGood). That sounds right, you would say, but no, if you are using WordPress, there is another RSS link that your users may discover when they visit your website.
The Header File
The header file of your WordPress theme typically contains a link tag for your blog feed, and it contains the original WordPress feed URL for your blog. A lot of people subscribe to your blog through tools which auto-discover your URL, and may end up subscribing to this feed link instead of the FeedBurner URL.
Here is what this tag looks like:
<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”<?php bloginfo(’name’); ?> RSS Feed” href=”<?php bloginfo(’rss2_url’); ?>” />
To get the correct stats on your FeedBurner, replace the above code to:
<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”<?php bloginfo(’name’); ?> RSS Feed” href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/HabituallyGood” />
This allows your pages to have the right Feed URL in the header.
How to see if there are subscribers on your original feed URL
If you use Google Webmaster Tools, then you can see at least the subscribers that use Google Tools to subscribe to this feed. Go to Statistics->Subscriber Stats, and you will see a table like this:
Well, that is more than 20% of what my FeedBurner statistics show. All people who subscribe to my blog, please shift to http://feeds.feedburner.com/HabituallyGood.
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May 1st, 2008 at 10:55 am
Houston! I was just about to ask you regarding the same.
May 1st, 2008 at 11:01 am
Now it shows 2 feed addresses
May 1st, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Anshul, what shows two feeds?
May 9th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
[...] A few days ago I discovered that your FeedBurner stats may not be reflecting the true number of subscribers that subscribe to your blog feed. I found out that the problem was that most WordPress themes have the RSS links embedded in the templates and most of us forget to change that. Check post here. [...]
May 11th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
I have bookmarked this page and will take a look at it again when I get home. Thanks for the tip. I have been wondering if people subscribe using my original feeds or my Feedburner feeds.
May 11th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
@Louie… I am glad that you found this useful. Do look at a follow up post I did on this topic: http://blog.gadodia.net/get-the-right-data-on-your-feed-subscriber-numbers/