So in my quest to revamp my life, I started using Google Reader last week. That way I don’t have to click on each and every one of my blog roll links to see if you have updated your site. It has been a real time saver and probably delayed the inevitable carpal tunnel.
Anyone else use it?
If so I have two questions:
1. I have subscribed to others but with an RSS feed how do I determine how many people (and better which people) have subscribed to me?
2. I know you can separately subscribe to someones comments separate than the post, but is there a way to set up google reader so I see the post and the comments all together?
Inquirering minds want to know.
i need2 take this tip-great idea. guess it works for pple like me who loves to read n blog.
Keeps me updated through the day and now I can jump on commenting before George.
great questions, Bear! I, too, would like to know.
Still waiting on great answers.hahah
I used feedburner (http://feedburner.google.com) and when you sign in to Google you can see how many people have subscribed to your feed, however when I’m checking mine it always says “0” subscribers. I know I’ve subscribed to my own feed, so I know that’s not right. As far as the comments and posts question, I’m not sure. I know it can be done. I just don’t know how.
I am subscribed to you so that is 2!!!
I had to download a widget on WordPress to see who was subscribing.
Which one?
I can answer the first one, but I don’t subscribe to comments so I’m not sure what to do about that.
To see how many subscribers, you can enter “beartoons” in the Add a Subscription box. Don’t add “.com” to it, because it will automatically subscribe you again. It’ll just search on “beartoons” and your site will come up, showing how many are subscribed. Same with “Unbearablebears.”
HOWEVER, I don’t know if that’s only Google-reader subscribers, or if it includes Yahoo, Bloglines, etc. subscribers. I would love to know that.
Shows 13…but is there a way to know who is subscribing??
This may be something worth looking into. I don’t subscribe to any of my favorite comics. I just go thru the list on my site, sometimes from top to bottom or vice versa. I guess it is irksome to keep clicking on sites that haven’t updated or to miss the ones who do surprise updates (like you!). I’ll look into it.
complete time saver for me.
I use feedburner for my subscription service and I added a little widget that tells me how many people are subscribing to mine on a given day (right now floating average is about 57). I do know with feedburner, you can see on a daily basis who is actually subscribing to your blog and who is actually thinking about subscribing to your blog.
As for using Google reader, I don’t. I rather enjoy visiting each and everyone of my bookmarked faves (currently sitting at about 60) at least twice a week, and at least once a week, I do the entire list in fell swoop.
I used to do the same but then there are some people who are 2-3 posts down the way by the time I look.
or 8 -9 🙂
I used google reader for awhile but then my “reader” filled up fast and it would take me a while to go through all the posts. But for me I just check up dates clicking on my blog roll
Here you can see why I needed to use your avatar http://hmm-sweet-splendid-wisdom.com/2010/01/08/oh-snap-look-at-what-i-did
Why not just set your reader to your blog roll..haha
Wish I could help. Unfortunately (and way too obviously) I know next to nothing about RSS feeds / etc. (See my archaic model for reference – I think it might actually be steam powered)! 🙂
Yeah I was going to call you out. You and midtoons are the only ones I can’t put in the reader.
Hi, Bearman!
Unfortunately there isn’t a real way to tell who subscribes to your feed that I’ve found, though if you use a site tracking service like “sitemeter.com”, it will tell you when clicks come to your site from google reader. Clicks from feeds and bookmarks show up as “unknown” in sitemeter (because there is no website link to use as a referral, which also means that “bots” show up as “unknown”).
I use feedburner to broadcast my feed and can tell you that feedburner’s subscriber number is only an estimate, which is why it fluctuates. Feedburner is great for seeing what kinds of feed readers your readers are using, how many “clickthroughs” you get from your feed, and has an easy way for non-feedreader visitors to get the feed through their email (you can see which email addresses have signed up).
To subscribe to a specific post for wordpress, I assume you put the post URL + “/feed/” in your browser’s address bar, since http://beartoons.com/2010/01/08/google-reader/feed/ is the RSS subscription link for this post.
Great info…thanks Samantha!!
I’ve been thinking about switching over… maybe now I will..
Regarding your question about reading posts and comments together, the best solution I can think of is creating a Folder for each blog you are following and adding both the post RSS and the comment RSS there. That way you only open the folder and both will appear and make reading easier. Using folders is a great way to organize ans simplify the use of GReader and I definitely recommend opening folders depending on priority or subject. It can really speed up sorting and finding interesting stuff. Tags are also essential to classify and archive relevant articles.
The possibilities of GReader are endless, you can set it up so that your friend’s Facebook status and notifications show up there, not to mention Twitter searches and favorites. It can really be the hub of your life online.
I have a full series of tips for Google Reader unfortunately they are all in spanish 🙁
Good luck and keep posting your experiences with GReader
Angel B
Mexico City
PS – I found your post via Lazyfeed, tracking “Google Reader”
Angel thanks so much. I’ll have to get my neice to translate for me. Hope you find you way back.
I’d been looking into google reader and subscriptions – not got beyond the lots of questions stage, so nice to see you boldy going where I’ve not been before and finding answers. Thanks.
If I can’t get answers, I will always make them up Sheila.
well don’t worry, with my 2 posts per month i won’t be blowing up your reader anytime soon
I’ve been using Google Reader for awhile – otherwise I would read a lot less comics.
When you get on one feed look to the far right of the reader and you will see ‘show details’. that will give you some very basic info.
I’m looking at ‘Kidd and Geezer’ right now and I see – Posts per week:3.0Subscribers:5 – and some other info. To the best of my knowledge, this is only for Google Reader. My feedburner stats show 15 subscribers. That ‘show details’ works on any feed you subscribe too.
PVP – Posts per week:7.5 Subscribers:4,459 – I’m willing to bet Scott has way more subscribers than that; but it’s showing ONLY Google Readers.
You can not get specific info on who they are – just like any stat counter does not tell who visited your site, just some basic info about them.
As for reading posts and comments together – that would be a function of you feed generator I would assume. Google Reader will show a comments count though. It shows 27 comments for this post. If I click on that, then it brings me straight to the comment section starting with Corve DaCosta at the top.
I think that depends on the softward of the blog you subscribe to. All wordpress blogs seem to show the comments number but not all.
You would think that subscribers would want to be known. There should be a thing that allows that on readers.
the wordpress blog theme determines whether post count is shown on the blog or not. Feedburner has a “fleed flash” that puts the number of comments in the feed, but it lags behind.
If you put your feed burner feed url into your WP-admin area for “feed”, it will keep track of those who click o your feeds no matter what feed reader they are using. (It gives a breakdown.)
For reading comics, I am like Frank Zieglar above. I NEED a feed reader. I use Brief plug-in for firefox. I put all my feeds in a bookmark folder. I can sort them like bookmarks (“Comics, news, friends blogs, etc.”), it checks the sites several times a day and I have a little icon at the bottom of my firefox window showing how many unread items there are. Now that I am used to using a feed reader (and it took a while), there is no way I could ever, ever go back.
Google’s bot for feeds tells you how many subscribers there are in your web stat logs (assuming you have direct access to those.) Look for Feedfetcher-Google. (Of course you still don’t know who they are and this is only for Google.) Ex.
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx – – [07/Feb/2010:04:21:34 -0500] “GET /feed/ HTTP/1.1” 304 0 http://www.thegrumpygeek.com “-” “Feedfetcher-Google; (+http://www.google.com/feedfetcher.html; 23 subscribers; feed-id=5126165167423893527)” “-“
Thanks GG..thought you might have given up blogging. I don’t have web stats on .com.
Looking for a good wordpress webhost and going to convert to .org
I’m still around, just got really busy in the real world 😉