So Google recently made it fairly easy to determine the number of Google Reader subscribers around a particular blog. Gabe Rivera at Techmeme did a little work on excel and came up with an unofficial list of the top blogs and the number of subscribers each blog has on Google Reader. He sent the list around to people for comments – with his permission we’ve published it below.
This isn’t perfect because you have to think of the blog and then do a search for the stats; so some blogs may be left off. Also, some of these stats are aggregate numbers from different feeds for the same blog.
If you see errors or blogs that should be added, please point them out and we’ll correct them. It would also be good to round this out to a top 100 list and compare it to Technorati and TechMeme Leaderboard. Hopefully, Google will just publish this data themselves at some point.
The blog or other news site is listed on the left. Total Google Reader subscribers is listed in the second column.
Update: Robert Scoble posts subscriber numbers based on the TechMeme Leaderboard rankings. Someone should aggregate all of this data into a single Top 100 list.
Google’s reticence to add features to Google Reader has been somewhat frustrating. The fact that it takes TechCrunch + Scoble + TechMeme to approximate a Top 100 list is poor, as this is something Google should deliver themselves.
I asked for this back in March, and the team is still delinquent.
http://www.loui...gle-reader.html
These lists are great for comments. You’re going to get a ton of “you forget me” comments, so I may as well kick us off.
You forgot MarketingPilgrim.com – Google reader shows us with 1,656 readers.
Amazing how the content of every single blog within the Top 30 has a technology focus. Clearly RSS, feed readers and such haven’t yet reached the masses. It would be interesting to hear splits ( from Feedburner perhaps ) between RSS subscriptions versus Email subscriptions. In non-technical circles, I’d estimate that email subscriptions win by at least 2-1. Anyone else?
To elaborate: if I found multiple *active* feeds for the same blog, I added the subscriber counts, believing the numbers mostly to belong to nonoverlapping sets of users. E.g. two different capitalizations for TechCrunch’s feed produced the 129K total.
I’m sure I overlooked some things. Ironically, I undercounted Techmeme by 1162 having missed one feed. (In any case most Techmeme users use the webpage…)
I’ve removed the table from the post and put this into a zoho spreadsheet for easier editing.
“Someone should aggregate all of this data into a single Top 100 list.”
The leaderboard data is invalid, because it’s for references, not readers. The feedburner and google data would have to be aggregated alone, and not everybody uses feedburner.
Inbound and outbound links are for ranking pages not popularity or readers.
I also do not believe for a second that Techcrunch has more readers than digg or slashdot. It’s impossible. Look at the comments at Digg and Slashdot.
Unless Techcrunch has robots other than the usual search spiders that it built itself to boost it’s own rating. I wouldn’t put it past you guys either. I know a few top alexa sites did that 2 years ago by automating toolbar hits.
Chris, I think it’s possible that TechCrunch *does* have more Google Reader RSS subscribers than Digg or Slashdot. The percentage of people who read TechCrunch or Scobleizer and know about Google Reader is much higher than the common Digg or Slashdot user.
“Chris, I think it’s possible that TechCrunch *does* have more Google Reader RSS subscribers than Digg or Slashdot. The percentage of people who read TechCrunch or Scobleizer and know about Google Reader is much higher than the common Digg or Slashdot user.”
If that’s true then it would highlight the invalidity of Google reader subscribers as an accurate metric for Tech popularity, making Arrington’s post as valid as an Alexa ranking.
Chris – its an accurate metric for Google Reader popularity, not tech popularity.
I was stunned to see that my blog has more than 33,000… if I’m reading it right.
I think it got left out from this list though, Mike.
Hmmm, I wonder why our numbers don’t match. I hope I didn’t add things incorrectly. For my own numbers I think you added my old and new feed together, which over rates my audience size here.
The BBC has the most subscribers, though, at 202,463. I think one reason is because they put an “about news feeds” link next to each of their feeds, which goes to this well-written page: http://news.bbc...elp/3223484.stm
Mike: it might be fun to take my numbers and put them into your spreadsheet. I wouldn’t mind if you did that. If you give me access, I could add them too.
I’ve got 895 for http://feeds.si.../swn-everything and another 2242 for http://simon.in...yndicate/rss1.0, my old feed that redirects to the new one. I guess that gives me 3137 total.
Seth: I added you to my list at http://scobleiz...rs-do-you-have/
My blog has 5k on Google but there is a second atom feed with another 2500. I am sure there are many others. The hard part is knowing which blogs to start with. Also, Bloglines and Newsgator also publish figs. Between the three of them that’s a good 80% of RSS readers. Might be neat to tally them up.
Steve Rubel: On my list I show that you have 7,676. Let me know if any numbers aren’t accurate.
Seth and Steve – added you.
Robert – i gave you read/write permission on the sheet. have at it.
Steve, Seth, Robert-
Let me know if you’d like somebody to help you finish off.
Hah. Look at that list. This should serve as a reality check for anyone who claims that Google Reader has popularized RSS and reached a broad audience.
The #1 RSS reader for “real” people is probably still My Yahoo! (and most of those RSS consumers probably don’t even know they’re reading RSS feeds).
MacRumors.com has 16,646
added macrumors
Elise Baur’s Simply Recipes, http://www.elise.com/recipes/ , has 2800+ in Google Reader, interesting in light of her total of 235k subscribers. So 20% of TC’s subscribers are using Google Reader and 1% of Elise’s are. Over at Read/WriteWeb 10% of our subscribers are using Google Reader. We’ve got just more than half of what Elise has, though.
One thing I learned at the Blogher conference was that there are established rock stars that are totally different in different blog niches. Confessions of a Pioneer Woman, for example, is a blog that regularly gets 300-400 comments per post. I think her panel at Blogher was scheduled at the same time Barb Dybwad from Engadget and Gina from Lifehacker spoke on power tools for blogging – and I was really surprised to see their room only 1/2 full.
Different communities have different rock stars and some of them really are as big in things like RSS subscribers as tech blogs are. So much is demographics though, too – have you looked at Alexa and compared TC and Webware, for example? Alexa says Webare is like 3X TC’s size. Probably just speaks to Firefox and RSS subscribers vs. IE users.
My personal blog has 534 readers in Google Reader, but they are very smart and lovable readers.
If you think about News and Politics…
Drudge Report: 2,942
Daily Kos: 7,285
Eschaton: 2,310
Talking Points Memo: 2,469
CNN: 39,229
NYTimes: 33,159
ok – I’ll continue to update this tonight and tomorrow but what we really need to do is create a spreadsheet wiki somewhere to keep track of this.
I know I am down there somewhere, at 1,027 at Google Reader, although Feedburner has Google feeds at 1200ish.
Two feeds 1027+226 = 1253
#22 marshall – Webware appears larger in Alexa because Webware falls under the cnet.com umbrella – check the top link and you will see
#24 mike – I don’t think there is any reason to keep track of it – it changes day by day so it would be a nightmare to manage and subscriber numbers are still hits of ‘95.
added /message
If anyone out there wants to help update the sheet, ping me and I’ll add you.
Uncrate has 5,461
Neatorama has 2,288
43 Folders has 9,231
Daring Fireball has 10,878
The Apple Blog has 2,959.
I’d like to throw DZone.com’s main feed in there. We have roughly 2150 Google readers according to the search in Google Reader. Thanks!
Mike,
The numbers in the Google Reader search seem to be off by a pretty significant amount.
For Publishing 2.0, Feedburner says 2,517 subscribers via Google Reader, but a search in Google Reader only shows 1,270.
I think Allen Stern is right that this data is like counting server “hits” back in the 90’s. A more interesting (probably impossible to get) data point would be the percentage of subscribers who NEVER read the feed — kind of like magazine subscribers back in the old days who just let the issues pile up.
I read this one of two ways:
1) This is completely spurious data, because all that has been checked are tech blogs. Gabe should have a pretty solid list of political and gossip blogs thanks to Memeorandum and WeSmirch, so it would be great to know whether he checked those blogs’ numbers as well.
2) Proof that RSS readers (or maybe just Google Reader) are a massively niche tool used by the tech crowd and little else.
Until more data is given, there’s no way to tell which is which. And without this data, the post is basically just another excuse for tech bloggers to compare their privates
Where are the political blogs?
Quotes of the Day has 129K+ Subscribers…
I changed my mind: http://www.tech...comment-1675390
This is insanity, so please don’t add Marketing Pilgrim.
Watch out for anythong from Gaggle!
You have a webbrowser, why use something else?
This is just plain stupid!
http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com
“Chris – its an accurate metric for Google Reader popularity, not tech popularity.”
That it is, but what is that supposed to mean above the actual Google reader stats as-is?
In linking between friend sites shouldn’t be counted. Those leaderboards are reference counts between the top sites on Technorati.
It would be like Google’s different services ranking themselves in a top 100 list based on in-linking. It wouldn’t mean very much as a metric.
I think if you wanted to present numbers in the facebook way to boost value, then this was a good post. It certainly shows Techcrunch on top of something.
woot.com has 6200+ subscribers
I’d be more interested in ACTIVE subcriptions vs subscriptions. i.e. how much is it being read vs who is subscribed. Or will this ever be possible to tell?
Make sure to drop Uncov in there!
Funny that the BBC help page on RSS doesn’t list Google Reader as an available reader!
http://news.bbc...elp/3223484.stm
PaulStamatiou.com – 1,551
added uncov at 754 subs and Paul Stamatiou at 1551
Those numbers look fishy. Google’s feedfetcher shows over 6,000 in my server logs.
Hmm.
Yeah…the blogs that people LINK to can often be wildly different than the feeds people read. That’s part of the reason we’re working on a reader that will show an enormous number of stats, including which assets (stories) from which feeds people are actually viewing.
Anyway, I’d be happy to add this list in to the spreadsheet if you’d like:
Google News 192,100
ESPN.com 189,274
Martketwatch 176,814
make magazine 61,464
CNN Money 41,751
Google Blogoscoped 41,387
The Street.com 36,048
Fool.com 35,307
autoblog 27,808
defamer 22,763
the truth about cars 21,972
popsugar 21,946
digg / technology 9,335
people.com 4,862
aVC 3,416
valleywag 3,204
Yahoo Entertainment News 2,609
achewood 1,092
Maybe we should make a tool that lets you upload your OPML file and see how many Google reader subscribers there are for each of the feeds?
Any interest?
It’s very interesting. Here are popular Korean IT blogs ranking.
IT Viewpoint – 1,079 (http://itviewpo...om/tt/index.xml)
Taewoo’s Web 2.0 – 802 (http://feeds.fe...urner.com/twlog)
Channy’s Blog – 781 (http://feeds.fe...rner.com/channy)
Case of feedburner,
Israel – added those as well.