Inside View from Ireland: InsideView of Google Subscribers

ANYONE WHO VALUES their marketing campaign, brand name or syndicated reach will occasionally ego-surf and start looking at where they appear. For years, I have used Bloglines as my thermometer of activity and over the years, I have watched blog subscribers slowly head downwards. That's to be expected since my blogging activity has decreased in order to give me time to create photostreams and podcasts. Plus there's the day job that needs serious attention as well. People in the day job like to see where they fit into the online conversation and that means going beyond a query count, Page Rank or inbound link harvest. To see where you fit into the online conversation, you should start with your number of newsfeed subscribers and calculate readership across the universe. I glanced at Google Reader this morning and spotted some interesting facts worth sharing.

1. There is a direct relationship between number of Feedburner reads and the number of Google Reader subscribers. In the case of the InsideView blog, for every person subscribed to the blog through Google Reader, 15 additional people read the blog through Feedburner. These numbers will change from blog to blog but it's interesting to see a 15:1 relationship here. FACT: Topping the table in Google Reader does not translate into total reach of a product, service or personality. Total reach is a composite number, something you might derive with credibility by using Electric Search from Zenark.

2. Top Irish blogs subscribed through Google Reader include the usual suspects of Tom Raftery (227), Donncha O Caoimh (155), and Damien Mulley (185). The middle tier of Irish blogs with strong Google Reader followings include Justin Mason (83), Tom Murphy (68), Michele Neylon (62) and Keith Bohanna (51).

3. Getting cited as a Google Scholar or in Wikipedia like Twenty Major (38 Google Readers for the eminent author) does not guarantee mass quantities of followers in Google Reader.

4. According to Google Reader, the most subscribed technology pages come from Engadget (146,449) and Wired Top Stories (104,159).

5. RTE (1030 readers) and leads for "Irish" on Google Reader and the Irish Times (422 readers) leads for references to "Ireland" in Google Reader.

6. Across the world of Google readership, the term "social media" correlates to online marketing (1952 instances), data mining (1285) and the Media Guardian (989) along with the Wall Street Journal (687).

7. Searching for Tipperary Institute brings up interesting power relationships to upcoming events, photostreams, job opportunities and learning programmes. These results would change if the front page of the TippInst website had an RSS feed with an established Google readership.

Screenshot scraped from using the search box in the "Add Subscription" area of Google Reader.
Darren Rowse -- "Google Reader Reveal Subscriber Numbers to Feeds"