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Permalink Reply by Sharon on February 18, 2010 at 8:20pm

good question... I've wondered this myself.

I think it depends if you are having your blog feed directed to Feedburner. On Blogger, if you have entered your feedburner feed as your redirect, I think Google Readers are getting that. And on WordPress I think if you are using a plugin like Feedsmith I think it points all the feeds at Feedburner, including your Google Readers.

Recently when I moved to WordPress I had to change my feed source and my numbers dropped by the same amount of people that had been reading via Google Followers... so I assume that they were built into the count.

All of this is speculation on my part, so if someone knows differently, please feel free to correct me!

Sharon
www.goodtrueandbeautiful.com

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Permalink Reply by chilihead on February 18, 2010 at 8:32pm

I'm not sure what you mean by Google Followers, but yes, your Feedburner account is only tracking those readers subscribed to your RSS or e-mail feed(s). I would hesitate to have you combine the Google Followers number and the Feedburner number until I fully understand what "Google Followers" means since, depending on what it is, it may include your subscribers. If you added those numbers together, you may be inflating your actual readership.

Melanie Nelson
BloggingBasics101.com

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Permalink Reply by Kristen on February 18, 2010 at 8:35pm

Feedburner does count your google followers....as far as I know. I just lost 160 of them b/c I moved my blog to self-hosted Wordpress and something went haywire with my feed....so now all those people are stuck thinking I'm not publishing anything I guess. I was redirecting my feed through blogger to feedburner though...not sure how you have it set up.

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Permalink Reply by forgetfulone on February 18, 2010 at 8:48pm

To answer Melanie, I think the Google Followers are just people who have signed up to your blog via Google Reader. I wouldn't combine the numbers because there are some readers who are signed up as "followers" who also use an RSS feed (myself included). I frequently "follow" blogs that are not in my RSS Feed Reader (Bloglines), so I would show up both places.

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Permalink Reply by Carrie Russell on February 18, 2010 at 10:34pm

by google followers, I mean on my blog i have a "widget" that says "follow" (maybe I mena Blogger Followers). I currently have 89 followers on there. However, in my feedburner (which I do redirect my RSS thru feedburner) it says 156 subscribers (that is RSS and email)

I personally use google reader to read, and only a small handful of the blogs I read are ones I have clicked the Follow button on the person's blog. Most are Rss feeds I clicked or I manually entered into google reader.

Does this clarify?? Would love it if I have 245 followers instead of 156.

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Permalink Reply by Tiffany Merritt on February 25, 2010 at 4:47pm

Hi Carrie,

You sound JUST like me in this regard. I read blogs through google reader. I "follow" a few of my favorite review/giveaway blogs (so that I can get an extra entry in their contests) but I'm still reading their blogs through google reader.

I have always assumed that feedburner was not counting my google connect followers and I have been combining the numbers. While I understand that there may be instances where someone has subscribed to my blog through email or RSS AND has signed up to follow me on google friend connect, I'm adding those two stats together to get my grand total. Oy, I'll be so disappointed if my feedburner is counting all of those google connect numbers!

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