More Google Punishment After PageRank Penalizing?
Whats going on over at the feedburner factory? It seems they have downsized over half of the amount of Rss subscribers of the world’s most popular blogs, and us! We were sitting on a healthy 700+ subscribers yesterday, while today is showing nearly 50% less with 340?! Mr Chow dropped back to his original amount of 8000+ which he had before his race with Shoemoney. We believe Mr Problogger got cut down over 15,000 readers! It seems Google is flexing its muscles to show us bloggers who’s boss. Is this the day the Internet died? — Well half of it anyway.
We’re pretty sure its actually the actual Google reader application, since that’s not showing up in the screenshot and we know that nearly 50% of our readers use that to keep up2date with the happenings in the cow pastures.
Its probably just a glitch where either the feed subscribers or the email subscribers have not been taken into account, but we can’t stop wondering if it is perhaps Google, who bought feedburner a few months ago, has a grudge against us bloggers. First with the whole pagerank fiasco, telling a lot of bloggers off by decreasing their ranking significantly. And now perhaps by taking away half our readers to show us who’s boss. Who’s up for a panic?
Seems we’re not the only ones that noticed the drop. Loads of people are reporting huge drops in readers. Feel free to leave your complaints over at the feedburner forums.
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This problem happened quite sometime back if i remember and after days before the feeds got back to its original numbers. My feedbar shows a low number, but my account does not show any decrease in subscribers. I am not sure why you guys have. Might be what you said google is flexing its muscles on readers.
My rss subscribers also got slashed in half. It might be a Feedburner Update or glitch. But that Google flexing it’s muscle to show us who’s boss could be a possibility. Hmm
I didn’t actually look into it much when I reported it but after reading this I looked a bit further and sure enough Google Reader are not showing up. That would explain why different blogs are seeing different drops - most of my readers are from Bloglines for instance.
I really doubt Google would have done this deliberately to prove a point. I’d be surprised if it doesn’t sort itself out within a day or two.
I am glad I read this post. I was getting worried as most of my readers are dropped too. Dont know whats going on google empire
[...] Google punishment? I don’t think [...]
Ahhh, glad to see it wasn`t me imagining things .. i noticed a massive drop in readers for some big names and wondered what was up. Guess the next few days things may even out.
It happened a while back, i think it’s just a glitch. Give it a day or two and it should be fine
I blogged about this first thing this morning. Talking via e-mail Darren Rowse reckons it might be just a one-off glitch. I sure hope so!
http://www.techzi.net/articles/2007/11/04/rss-holy-smokes/
^^ My freaked out initial reaction. Muhahahaha! ^^
mine only went down 20% on yesterday, im hoping this just means I got a new new subscribers as well
[...] to be a FeedBurner/GoogleReader bug, where readers from the later aren’t being counted. It is hitting blogs everywhere. [...]
It’s a one off glitch, it has happened before.
I have huge fluctuations with my feedburner stats every day. Every other day I have twice as many viewers as the day before, and then the next day the number drops in half, or even more steeply. This happens every single day, and it’s maddening! I haven’t been able to figure the whole thing out yet. Maybe it’s because I don’t have that many subscribers?
[...] However, it doesn’t just happened to me only. JohnCow asked if this is another Google slap? [...]
I see a 50% drop .
45n5 just posted the blog values based on the number of subscribers and this has to happen. 
I also found that from chow rss readers..
Now google want to show who’s the boss..
Not good idea…. That’s why monopoly is greeding..
Calm down dude, its just a glitch.
Down by 50% as well
It is just a glitch, I have seen it happen before, to my blog and other blogs, but not on a large scale such as this.
Lets hope they fix it soon
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
I’m rocking back nad forth trying to figure out how to put my blogging life back together
My number of subscribers also reduced… from 67 to 36, so it’s not just popular blogs. I would wait and see what happens.
I think that too, my rss feeds reduced considerably. But yesterday ( may be some days before ) I got pagerank 2, and last month I had unranked….I dunno what’s happening with google but at least my money with adsense is safe in my account…
Yay, more spanking from Google
I remember this happened about a year ago with Feedburner and the issue was resolved after 48 hours. Hopefully this is just a slight hiccup in the system. If Google really is making changes to how numbers are calculated, they could be in for a bit of a PR (Public Relations) nightmare.
That said, they could likely survive it without any trouble. They essentially own most of the English-speaking internet.
Yay, more spanking from Google
I remember this happened about a year ago with Feedburner and the issue was resolved after 48 hours. Hopefully this is just a slight hiccup in the system. If Google really is making changes to how numbers are calculated, they could be in for a bit of a PR (Public Relations) nightmare.
That said, they could likely survive it without any trouble. They essentially own most of the English-speaking internet
Looks like a false alert, my feed content is back to normal!!
I saw a decrease too, but not by half. Surely this must be some technical effect of moving servers or updating their Feedburner system…
It’s not a glitch, it’s a “feature”!
they’ll figger it out eventually
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
Mine got halfed to. It’s not Google, Feedburner always have glitches, it’s very likely just a Feedburner glitch which will fix itself soon.
Looks like a blanket glitch or is it a clampdown? Everyone’s dropping! And by the way why not DROP that E somewhere in the middle in “punishement”? LOL.
my hunch would be that it’s a feedburner glitch, as i’ve seen numbers bounce around pretty widely in the past. let’s hope at least.
It’s not like you’ve lost the readers anyway they’re just not displaying properly in Feedburner. But the Google readers are still there so who cares.
Markk: Thanks for the heads up, we’ve fired our typist.
I know my site got a page rank down, here I was thinking it was doing so much better than the months before it too.
Glad to hear you got your feed back
Looking on the positive side of not having too many RSS subscribers is that I don’t lose much anyway.
Feedburner RSS stats going back to normal now in some sites. Other sites will follow.
@Charles
Good to hear that
back up and running smoothly now I see
I’m glad to see that this was only a technical glitch.
This has happened before several times. Everything is fine now
Google Feedburner has acted up again. tsk tsk tsk.
what are they doing to their servers?
Don’t worry, you can find it funny, because Google also ranks itself 0.