Monday Nov 05, 2007
Monday Nov 05, 2007
Last week I spent a couple of days defending our inadequacy to track RSS feeds. Our web analytics vendor's tool just doesn't cut it. I kept pointing to the web analytics community and saying, "Even they're struggling with this!"
And then someone said, "What about FeedBurner? If they can do it, why can't we?" And then I had that stupid egg-on-the-face look, that look you get when you've heard of a technology or company and haven't researched it. So I spent the weekend testing it out on my personal blog and lo and behold - I love FeedBurner. And now my response - "Why do we need to do it if they'll do it for us for free?"
I feel like a total lop for not knowing about this, so I started investigating other options. From what I can tell, there aren't any and even more disturbing is that the discussions I found weren't by major web analytics players. Not to mention the fact that the discussion I found were prehistoric. I'm not sure why the web analytics community has downplayed FeedBurner. One possibility is that we want everything in one tool and until Google Analytics, Omniture, or WebTrends can do it, we'll ignore anyone else that can, even if they're free and get the job done.
Maybe I'm wrong and there are other options and the key players have discussed them. If so, please steer me in the right direction. It just seems like I stongly remember the harsh reality that RSS tracking was extremely difficult, but yet a solution presented itself and I never remember that distinctive moment that assuaded our concerns - Eureka! All I ever heard was, "It can't be done." Not, "It can't be done by our vendor, but have you tried FeedBurner?"
If I'm right, then I'd like to see the web analytics community start discussing all the tools that are out there, even if they do one little thing like RSS tracking.
One important thing that I have learned is this - You can't learn everything from a community!
Dustin, you are right on the money. There are now so many tools out there, that are (often) better than the proprietary tools and platforms. And so, modular rulez! :)
One little quibble - you CAN learn everything from the community, you just need to find the right one(s). :)
Posted by Adriana on November 06, 2007 at 01:54 AM PST #
The answer as I see it is that feedburner is proxying all the traffic to the site.
I don't see how that is tracking the same thing as say webanalytics.
I think the answer is still that it can't be done from the centralized server point of view. The aggregation tools are masking readership and your numbers would only be as accurate as your ability to collect stats from all of the aggregation tools you can find.
While it is possible (Likely (: ) that no one finds my blog feed interesting enough to subscribe to, or because I never did change my RSS link to 'http://feeds.feedburner.com/Yakshaving' from the default 'http://blogs.sun.com/yakshaving/feed/entries/rss' Feedburner shows that I have no readership.
It is likely that this isn't strictly true, when I post I get more hits. Sometimes people comment. But I don't know how many are coming from say reader.google.com vs. newgator vs. ???
I also don't know who is reading my blog via the global b.s.c all posts rss (which is what I subscribe to)
I did just change my subscription link to feedburner and subscribe to myself but that won't catch anyone who has subscribed to my official feed URL.
Posted by Shawn Ferry on November 06, 2007 at 01:36 PM PST #
Adriana - I stand corrected. Perhaps I could have said, "You can't learn everything from just one community."
Posted by Dustin Wallace on November 06, 2007 at 02:15 PM PST #
Shawn -
I consider RSS tracking to be a proper subset of web analytics. After all, it is still tracking and analyzing web activity.
It can be done from a centralized server point of view. It boils down to log file analysis, but filtering the logs for picking out user agents is a full-time job. This appears to be how FeedBurner does it. The reason I believe the large-scale vendors haven't added this feature is because of the time and resources it takes and because it is not a page-tagging solution (back to log-file analysis which they have shunned).
Concerning your blog, if you don't change the link to the FeedBurner link, then it won't work. That will at least capture your new subscribers. Now concerning the subscribers you already have, you need to redirect the old RSS link to the FeedBurner link. This is a server redirect that is usually done in the .htaccess file, but it's not always easy to find the right person or get cooperation in a corporate setting.
Web Analytics is becoming trickier with each new technology. As has been pointed out by experts in the field, we need to discuss tracking when the technology is being developed and ensure that the technology can be tracked. Alas, web analytics is still behind in the game.
Posted by Dustin Wallace on November 06, 2007 at 02:24 PM PST #
Simplefeed is a good option for enterprise level RSS analytics.
Best regards,
Bill Flitter
Pheedo, Inc
RSS Marketing Solutions
Posted by Bill Flitter on April 06, 2008 at 07:29 PM PDT #
Bill - Thanks for the feedback. I looked over the SimpleFeed site, but can't figure out how it works with pre-existing feeds, especially blog feeds. The reporting looks intriguing, yet there is no description of what metrics are available. For the most part, I've been quite satisfied with the capability of FeedBurner.
Posted by Dustin Wallace on April 08, 2008 at 10:40 AM PDT #
It was a very nice idea! Just wanna say thank you for the information you have shared. Just continue writing this kind of post. I will be your loyal reader. Thanks again.
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