If You Read My Feeds

As of today, the index.rdf feed has been parsed so it’s only excerpts (which is what it should have been all along).

A few of my rss feeds have been publishing the full blog instead of just excerpts with links. That makes it a whole lot more difficult for me to gauge traffic. On top of that, I’ve found non-related sites that duplicate my content 100% (OK – steal my content), which they’re getting from these feed.

As of today, the index.rdf and atom.xml feeds have been parsed so it’s only excerpts (which is what it should have been all along). I hope that doesn’t adversely affect anyone. Full text is still a click away.

If I’ve screwed anything up, or you’re not getting what you think you should be getting, please let me know.

6 thoughts on “If You Read My Feeds”

  1. That stinks.

    I’ve been subscribed to your feed for over a year now and was psyched when you upgraded your site and the feed started containing full content. Since I read my feeds from my phone, sometimes over Edge, its nice to not have to click thru or decide if the topic is worth the wait.

    Other site’s like Lifehacker publish full content as well – not sure how they track their hits though.

    Anyway, just wanted to chime in – I like reading your posts, even though I infuriate my wife when we watch you on the news and I say ‘Geoff says this…’ or ‘Geoff did this…’ 😉

  2. Aww, man! I knew that it was probably an oversight when the feed went full text during the rejiggering of your site. I understand your rationale for going back to excerpt, but just wanted to let you know. These months I have read more from your site than ever before. No matter what site they scrape, I very seldom click through to a full article. Have you looked into an ad-supported full text feed?

  3. I agree with the above comments – I don’t have time to click thru to your site as I read hundreds of blogs a day. I use Google Reader which allows me to quickly read new blog entries. If I’m forced to click thru it won’t happen as much.

    Feedburner is now working with GoogleAdsense and Google Analytics. You might want to take a look at those.

    Since you don’t do this to make money – why does it matter? You can never know exactly how many readers you have. Do you know how many people actually watch you on TV every night? Does it change anything you do or say?

    I love your blog and it is one of my daily reads on Google reader, but if I have to click, I’ll read less.

  4. It’s obvious that full text rss feeds dilute the traffic to your site.

    Originally you thought the drop off in traffic to your site was an seo issue…it’ll be interesting to see how much your stats change over the next week or so, revealing a more accurate count.

  5. I agree with all the previous posters..feeds that are not full text feeds get dropped quickly by most of us who reed our news on mobile devices..nobody bothers to click through. They are a waste of time. Full text feeds are powerful ways to deliver content quickly. Most bloggers are migrating away from teaser feeds and toward full text. Most RSS users overwhelmingly support full feeds.

    I get my feeds by syncing my PDA and then read them later when I dont have internet access. I cant click through.

    But then again most TV news lives by the insulting concept of the tease. (“Killer tornado heading toward CT town. Find out if its your town, after this…”)

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