How many Google Reader subscribers do you have?

UPDATE: This list is no longer accurate. Google updated the numbers last night and they all changed pretty dramatically. I’ll update the list later this week when I have time.

Darren Rowse on ProBlogger showed me how to look up how many subscribers I have on Google Reader.

So, I went looking for some numbers.

Keep in mind that these are ONLY for Google Reader, which is only a small percentage of subscribers (although a growing number).

First, though, let’s look at the TechMeme Leaderboard. The numbers of Google Reader subscribers are in parenthesis.

1. TechCrunch (Google Reader says: 117,690 subscribers on one URL, 11,470 on another — this is for US site)
2. New York Times (33,159 for front page, 5,298 for top 10 most emailed items)
3. Engadget (146,449, it lists a number of others too — compare to only 28,289 for Gizmodo)
4. Ars Technica (about 19,000 in quick add up of all their feeds)
5. CNET News.com (14,395)
6. Read/WriteWeb (8,479)
7. The Register (5,826 for main feed, 1,208 for headlines)
8. GigaOM (5,393 subscribers, plus 1,840 for ommalik feed)
9. Silicon Alley Insider (unknown)
10. Computerworld (1,341 for breaking news, 1,959 for top news)
11. InfoWorld (889 for TechWatch blog, 4,384 for top news)
12. eWEEK.COM (5,021 for tech news, about 1,000 for other feeds)
13. Wall Street Journal (2,033 subscribers)
14. Associated Press (532 subscribers)
15. paidContent.org (401 subscribers)
16. AppleInsider (16,326. Compare to 16,646 for MacRumors)
17. BBC (202,463 for front page, 6,971 for Tech)
18. Crave: The gadget blog (3,136)
19. Search Engine Land (3,910, none for new Sphinn)
20. Reuters (4,006 for top news)
21. BusinessWeek (7,209, 3,617 for tech)
22. Bits, New York Times tech Blog (212)
23. Techdirt (12,628)
24. Webware.com (4,071)
25. TorrentFreak (981)
26. Between the Lines (1,588)
27. CrunchGear (4,190)
28. CenterNetworks (254)
29. All About Microsoft (542)
30. VentureBeat (1,138)
31. The Unofficial Apple Weblog (15,457)
32. Gizmodo (28,289)
33. Scripting News (7,594 for Dave Winer’s main blog and 339 for his annex)
34. Rough Type, Nick Carr (1,801)
35. Microsoft (MSDN Blogs where employees blog, 1,357; MSDN magazine, 1,413, Microsoft Research, 2,276, MSDN just published, 5,452, Microsoft’s press releases, 463. Compare to Mini-Microsoft, 3,246. There are a variety of others, but none higher than these)
36. BoomTown + Kara Swisher + AllThingsD (1,325 on Huffington Post, 377 on AllThingsD, 124 on BoomTown)
37. Wired News (104,159 for top stories, 4,291 for science, 2,729 for gadgets. Compare to Google News, which has 192,100).
38. mathewingram.com/work (18)
39. Business Wire (I couldn’t find data here)
40. Scobleizer (600 for ScobleShow, 4894 for Scobleizer, 29 to my Twitter feed,
41. NewTeeVee (1,439)
42. Tech Trader Daily (360)
43 A VC (Fred Wilson) (4,053)
44. PR Newswire (254)
45. Publishing 2.0 (1,270)
46. Forbes (1,058 on Tech News)
47. DailyTech (about 5,500 on main news feed)
48. Epicenter, Wired blog (351)
49. O’Reilly Radar (13,345)
50. Los Angeles Times (415 for top news, 947 for local, 935 for print edition)
51. Todd Bishop’s Microsoft Blog (597)
52. Times of London (988 for UK News from Times Online)
53. All Facebook (196)
54. Valleywag (5897)
55. Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim (1,656)
56. Inquirer (4,908)
57. WebProNews (about 500)
58. The Jason Calacanis Weblog (2,809)
59. Google LatLong (2,210)
60. ZDNet (930)
61. Download Squad (9,095)
62. Google Operating System (12,284)
63. Official Google Blog (71,283 — the Google Reader blog has 49,242)
64. The Boy Genius Report (1,629)
65. Guardian (7,448, 1,750 on World Latest)
66. PC World (2,279 on latest technology news)
67 Google Blogoscoped (41,387)
68. Infinite Loop (1,987)
69. Macworld (10,545, 843 in top stories)
70. Digital Daily (see Kara Swisher above)
71. Istartedsomething (380)
72. Mashable! (8,763)
73. Engadget Mobile (5,673 for mobile feed)
74. 9 to 5 Mac (76)
75. Guardian Unlimited (7448, 1,750 for World Latest)
76. Financial Times (638. Compare to 176,814 for MarketWatch.com)
77. Yodel Anecdotal, Yahoo’s blog (1,050)
78. MediaShift (784)
79. Yahoo! Search Blog (3,509)
80. Washington Post (5,197, 3,502 for politics)
81. Inside AdSense (4,325)
82. Broadcasting & Cable (63)
83. Akihabaranews.com (226)
84. Google Public Policy Blog (1,397)
85. comScore (526)
86: the::unwired (458)
87: ProBlogger Blog Tips (4,586)
88. Think Secret (10,610)
89. BuzzMachine (Jeff Jarvis) (3,166)
90. Agence France Presse (514)
91. ILounge (4,651)
92. Sprint (I couldn’t find)
93. DigiTimes (474)
94. ipodminusitunes (unknown)
95. Doc Searls Weblog (1,397)
96. Reflections of a Newsosaur (22)
97. Googling Google (1,268)
98. Salon (53,909)
99. Insider Chatter (51)
100. Telegraph (1,260)

TechMeme itself has 10,179.

I also picked some of my favorites to see how they rank
Tantek Celik (402)
Shelley Powers (105)
Tara Hunt (1,083)
Jeremiah Owyang (463)
Scott Beale (1,412)
Rodney Rumford (184)
Blognation (5)
Betsy Devine (73)
danah boyd (2,172)
Shel Israel (552)
Chris Pirillo (2,795)
Stephanie Booth (142)
Daily Kos (7,285)
Daring Fireball (10,878)
Darren Barefoot (359)
Derek Powazek (99)
A List Apart (10,542)
Ryan Stewart (478)
Don Dodge (1,324)
Dare Obasanjo (2,261)
Renee Blodget (178)
Ed Bott (1,113)
Michael Gartenberg (475)
Howard Lindzon (257)
Robert Cringley (5,948)
Jeff Clavier (768)
Jeffrey Zeldman (7,459)
John Battelle (35,976)
Joel Spolsky (26,911)
Tim O’Reilly (10,422)
Joi Ito (1,444)
Jon Udell (3,343)
Loic Le Meur (1,538)
Marc Canter (582)
Dave McClure (122)
Steve Rubel (7,676)
Matt Mullenweg (1,990)
Nick Bradbury (1,287)
Noah Kagan (123)
Paul Boutin (143)
Scott Guthrie (5,511)
Tom Raftery (227)
Thomas Hawk (720)
Uncov (754)
Quotationspage.com: (128,748)
Channel 9 (Microsoft’s video community) (2,268)
Leo Laporte (TwiT.TV, 2,854)
Kevin Rose (389)
Digg (14,247 to Digg/Tech; 109,286 for all News and Videos)
Jonathan Schwartz (3796)
Sun’s blogs (161)
Mark Cuban (8,436)
Guy Kawasaki (7,534)
Seth Godin (36,822)
Tom Peters (2,153)

MediaBlitz has its own analysis of the TechMeme leaderboard numbers. Basically it looks like only 5% of the average blog is read in an RSS reader so multiply these numbers by 20 and you’ll probably get close to real traffic levels.

Tim Bray reminds us that these numbers are ONLY for people who subscribed to the feeds in Google Reader. On his server he has 1,455 subscribers for his RSS, 4,403 for his atom feed, while Google Reader reported 3,690 for his feeds.

I’d love to know how many subscribers you have. Can you look your numbers up and put them in a comment? Remember to add up all the various feeds you have (that’s how I got these numbers above).

Enjoy!

The next step? What are you learning here? For one the BBC is one of the only sites that puts “about News Feeds” next to all of its feed icons (they link to a well done page about how to use News Feeds). Any wonder why they get so many subscribers?

UPDATE: Fred Oliveira says that Feed Burner is reporting to him that he has 2,445 subscribers from Google Reader but Google Reader says that Fred only has 524 subscribers from Google Reader. So, these numbers may be WAY off. But they are the data I had to work with. Would love to hear your stories. Tim Bray says he’s seeing a discrepancy too.

UPDATE #2: I might have missed some of your numbers. I tried to find them all, but please correct what you find if you find some that I missed.

UPDATE: #3: One thing you can’t look up? How many subscribers you have to my Google Reader Shared Items Blog.

UPDATE: #4: TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington was doing something similar. I need to go to dinner, otherwise I’d put my list in a spreadsheet like that.

139 thoughts on “How many Google Reader subscribers do you have?

  1. Hmmm, that’s interesting. Google Reader is reporting that 524 come to it for your feed.

    You open Google Reader. Click “Add Subscription.” Search for your name. It shows you how many subscribers you have.

    Like

  2. Hmmm, that’s interesting. Google Reader is reporting that 524 come to it for your feed.

    You open Google Reader. Click “Add Subscription.” Search for your name. It shows you how many subscribers you have.

    Like

  3. Found it. Weird indeed – with trailing slash (524) + without (419) amounts to almost 1,000 but feedburner still reports Google feedfetcher grabbing it 2.4x that.

    Like

  4. Kind of a bummer Matt & co took off the feed stats on WordPress.com hosted blogs. Ah well. Whopping 36 take the gWHIZ blog via Google Reader and another 26 via Feedburner. The 2,000 or so who come by the site each day… are getting here by tags and solid SEM methods. (search on “leopard release date” at Google… numero uno just a second ago)

    Like

  5. Kind of a bummer Matt & co took off the feed stats on WordPress.com hosted blogs. Ah well. Whopping 36 take the gWHIZ blog via Google Reader and another 26 via Feedburner. The 2,000 or so who come by the site each day… are getting here by tags and solid SEM methods. (search on “leopard release date” at Google… numero uno just a second ago)

    Like

  6. fyi – due to technical issues – i produce two feeds – the one techmeme uses is the lesser of the two – so that’s why CN numbers may appear smaller than they actually are. I gotta get this feed issue fixed 🙂

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  7. fyi – due to technical issues – i produce two feeds – the one techmeme uses is the lesser of the two – so that’s why CN numbers may appear smaller than they actually are. I gotta get this feed issue fixed 🙂

    Like

  8. Very handy. Thanks Robert. I made up a smaller list a few hours ago and emailed it to a few people…TC posted about the same time you did in fact.

    The different capitalizations and punctuations make this very error prone, but it’s still great to finally have some news subscriber data.

    Like

  9. You reported that I had 1,057 on Twitter earlier today (which didn’t make it into your favorites list), but Feedburner says 1,204 from Google Feedfetch. Note: 11,880 altogether according to Feedburner.

    Like

  10. Very handy. Thanks Robert. I made up a smaller list a few hours ago and emailed it to a few people…TC posted about the same time you did in fact.

    The different capitalizations and punctuations make this very error prone, but it’s still great to finally have some news subscriber data.

    Like

  11. You reported that I had 1,057 on Twitter earlier today (which didn’t make it into your favorites list), but Feedburner says 1,204 from Google Feedfetch. Note: 11,880 altogether according to Feedburner.

    Like

  12. My blog says “Unknown”. So, the way I see it, it’s either 0 or 100,000,000 (and, of course, I’m leaning towards the latter). And, although I’m a tech person, I have to admit to not always “getting” feedburner’s counting system (subscriber vs. live hits etc).

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  13. My blog says “Unknown”. So, the way I see it, it’s either 0 or 100,000,000 (and, of course, I’m leaning towards the latter). And, although I’m a tech person, I have to admit to not always “getting” feedburner’s counting system (subscriber vs. live hits etc).

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  14. Google Reader reports 177, Feedburner 192, I’m attributing that to the fact that Feedburner reports all of Google’s properties, including people who might have the feed showing on their iGoogle page, not just the one’s in Reader, while I assume Reader’s numbers are just from Reader users.

    I base this on nothing more than a guess.. 🙂

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  15. Google Reader reports 177, Feedburner 192, I’m attributing that to the fact that Feedburner reports all of Google’s properties, including people who might have the feed showing on their iGoogle page, not just the one’s in Reader, while I assume Reader’s numbers are just from Reader users.

    I base this on nothing more than a guess.. 🙂

    Like

  16. IMO, Robert, this isn’t relevant to mainstream readers and is reflective of technical audiences, for the most part.

    I don’t use a reader at all and I’ve asked all my friends and my kids and they don’t either.

    I have the sites I visit regularly saved as organized favorites using the Yahoo tab feature. One click to a particular folder and they all open up.

    I’ve tried the Google reader, but I’d rather go directly to the website.

    By this, it looks like newspapers have a small percentage of the traffic that places like TechCrunch and Digg get. I don’t believe it. Again, I think it’s skewed to favor technical sites because of the techie people who read them.

    My favorite news sites I don’t even have in my Yahoo tabs system. I look them up in the url address field by opening the dropdown and clicking on the one I want to visit. You techie folks probably think I’m crazy, but I bet the majority of the public does the same.

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  17. IMO, Robert, this isn’t relevant to mainstream readers and is reflective of technical audiences, for the most part.

    I don’t use a reader at all and I’ve asked all my friends and my kids and they don’t either.

    I have the sites I visit regularly saved as organized favorites using the Yahoo tab feature. One click to a particular folder and they all open up.

    I’ve tried the Google reader, but I’d rather go directly to the website.

    By this, it looks like newspapers have a small percentage of the traffic that places like TechCrunch and Digg get. I don’t believe it. Again, I think it’s skewed to favor technical sites because of the techie people who read them.

    My favorite news sites I don’t even have in my Yahoo tabs system. I look them up in the url address field by opening the dropdown and clicking on the one I want to visit. You techie folks probably think I’m crazy, but I bet the majority of the public does the same.

    Like

  18. Pingback: /Message
  19. Those numbers are pretty whack. You’ve got 18 through Google Reader, but Feedburner says that I’ve got almost 500 through Google Reader and iGoogle. And Feedburner says 1,600.

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  20. Those numbers are pretty whack. You’ve got 18 through Google Reader, but Feedburner says that I’ve got almost 500 through Google Reader and iGoogle. And Feedburner says 1,600.

    Like

  21. Nice stats. Lifehack.org has 8,625 + 4,423 (feedburner) = 13,048 readers on Google Reader. Really happy to see how blogs on the list could compete with major medias.

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  22. Nice stats. Lifehack.org has 8,625 + 4,423 (feedburner) = 13,048 readers on Google Reader. Really happy to see how blogs on the list could compete with major medias.

    Like

  23. Hmm…I guess it may trigger some debate over what qualifies as a blog, but over at Woot, it looks like we’re ending up somewhere around 14k, counting the various main site ones and wine, but apparently without numbers yet for shirt and sellout.

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  24. Hmm…I guess it may trigger some debate over what qualifies as a blog, but over at Woot, it looks like we’re ending up somewhere around 14k, counting the various main site ones and wine, but apparently without numbers yet for shirt and sellout.

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  25. Out of my 532 subscribers, I only have 52 readers subscribed to my feed via Google Reader, but I have 174 according to Feedburner (so does that mean 122 people have me on iGoogle?) Weird, I thought it would be the other way around.

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  26. Out of my 532 subscribers, I only have 52 readers subscribed to my feed via Google Reader, but I have 174 according to Feedburner (so does that mean 122 people have me on iGoogle?) Weird, I thought it would be the other way around.

    Like

  27. Doesn’t this basically tell us what blogs are popular with Google Reader users? How that indictitive of anything?

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  28. Doesn’t this basically tell us what blogs are popular with Google Reader users? How that indictitive of anything?

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  29. Do we even know if these numbers from the Google RSS subscribe function are live? I’m seeing a huge discrepancy between what Google is reporting and what Feedburner is reporting for Google RSS. Google is massively under-reporting for me, it looks like. At least that’s what I prefer to believe.

    I wonder how variable the Google Reader market share is from blog to blog.

    Like

  30. Do we even know if these numbers from the Google RSS subscribe function are live? I’m seeing a huge discrepancy between what Google is reporting and what Feedburner is reporting for Google RSS. Google is massively under-reporting for me, it looks like. At least that’s what I prefer to believe.

    I wonder how variable the Google Reader market share is from blog to blog.

    Like

  31. My main feed (Google Earth Hacks) is showing 92,592 in Reader. FeedBurner is showing a total of 94,080, so that’s about right. Being a site about a Google product, I’ve long suspected that the vast majority were using Reader and/or iGoogle.

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  32. My main feed (Google Earth Hacks) is showing 92,592 in Reader. FeedBurner is showing a total of 94,080, so that’s about right. Being a site about a Google product, I’ve long suspected that the vast majority were using Reader and/or iGoogle.

    Like

  33. Wild – here are my subscriber numbers. Interesting how the numbers are so off from each other (ie., bloglines via bloglines vs feedburner):

    Bloglines:
    533 (via search)
    173
    190
    531 (looking at the individual subscription)

    Feedburner:
    2141
    735 (bloglines)
    661 (Google Feedfetcher)

    Google Reader:
    478
    478 (this shows twice for some reason)

    Like

  34. Wild – here are my subscriber numbers. Interesting how the numbers are so off from each other (ie., bloglines via bloglines vs feedburner):

    Bloglines:
    533 (via search)
    173
    190
    531 (looking at the individual subscription)

    Feedburner:
    2141
    735 (bloglines)
    661 (Google Feedfetcher)

    Google Reader:
    478
    478 (this shows twice for some reason)

    Like

  35. 204 for BusinessBlogWire, out of about 650 FeedBurner subs. I’d guess that the Know More Media network has maybe 5,000-7,000 Google Reader subcribers (around 20,000 FeedBurner subs total).

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  36. 204 for BusinessBlogWire, out of about 650 FeedBurner subs. I’d guess that the Know More Media network has maybe 5,000-7,000 Google Reader subcribers (around 20,000 FeedBurner subs total).

    Like

  37. I couldn’t get the Google reader values for Sciencebase but Feedburner reported about 2600 overall last time I looked, and Odiogo stats just in show I’ve got 1000+ podcast subscribers on top of that 😉

    db

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  38. I couldn’t get the Google reader values for Sciencebase but Feedburner reported about 2600 overall last time I looked, and Odiogo stats just in show I’ve got 1000+ podcast subscribers on top of that 😉

    db

    Like

  39. Google reader was reporting 2321 yesterday for quickonlinetips.com and after the update is reporting 6117, which is fairly accurate by Feedburner’s Google feedfetcher counts also.

    Like

  40. Google reader was reporting 2321 yesterday for quickonlinetips.com and after the update is reporting 6117, which is fairly accurate by Feedburner’s Google feedfetcher counts also.

    Like

  41. Hi5 Codes — You’re being very short-sighted. If used properly, a good RSS feed will bring MORE visitors to your site. For example, I follow about 250 feeds and keep up with them every day. There is NO WAY I’d visit all 250 sites each day, but I happily click-through when I find a good item (such as the one we’re on right now).

    If your site found its way into my feedreader, I’d see ALL of your new content every day. Otherwise, I might visit your site once every x days, when I happen to think of it.

    Like

  42. Hi5 Codes — You’re being very short-sighted. If used properly, a good RSS feed will bring MORE visitors to your site. For example, I follow about 250 feeds and keep up with them every day. There is NO WAY I’d visit all 250 sites each day, but I happily click-through when I find a good item (such as the one we’re on right now).

    If your site found its way into my feedreader, I’d see ALL of your new content every day. Otherwise, I might visit your site once every x days, when I happen to think of it.

    Like

  43. Hey Robert – I commented over at TC but thought it couldn’t hurt to mention it here as well. My blog ‘Dumb Little Man’ has a Google Reader subscriber count just north of 53K.

    Jay

    Like

  44. Hey Robert – I commented over at TC but thought it couldn’t hurt to mention it here as well. My blog ‘Dumb Little Man’ has a Google Reader subscriber count just north of 53K.

    Jay

    Like

  45. Ain’t there no love in the ‘hood for poor old Coding Horror? Et tu, Scoble!

    I have 32,379 subscribers by this metric, which means I am now officially more important than the front page of the New York Times!

    TAKE THAT GRAY LADY!

    Like

  46. Ain’t there no love in the ‘hood for poor old Coding Horror? Et tu, Scoble!

    I have 32,379 subscribers by this metric, which means I am now officially more important than the front page of the New York Times!

    TAKE THAT GRAY LADY!

    Like

  47. Pingback: Dibs.net
  48. Cool, i just finally broke down and set up Google reader, i was using a mac-based system, but the ubiquity of google is equity for everybody… i kind of sound like a sales rep, yikes! Anyway, it is a nice service, i just wish it looked nicer instead of the baby blue nightmare scheme.

    -Americo
    http://ThunkDifferent.com

    Like

  49. Cool, i just finally broke down and set up Google reader, i was using a mac-based system, but the ubiquity of google is equity for everybody… i kind of sound like a sales rep, yikes! Anyway, it is a nice service, i just wish it looked nicer instead of the baby blue nightmare scheme.

    -Americo
    http://ThunkDifferent.com

    Like

  50. Cool, i just finally broke down and set up Google reader, i was using a mac-based system, but the ubiquity of google is equity for everybody…

    Like

  51. Cool, i just finally broke down and set up Google reader, i was using a mac-based system, but the ubiquity of google is equity for everybody…

    Like

  52. Any way to see all trafic?… isn't there something you may add to your code… how can you be shure… couldn't you tack the number the button was pushed?

    Like

  53. Any way to see all trafic?… isn't there something you may add to your code… how can you be shure… couldn't you tack the number the button was pushed?

    Like

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