Google Reader Stats Are In

As you may have read elsewhere already, Google recently began reporting the numbers of feed subscribers through Google Reader and on Google Personalized Homepage. If, as I do, you use FeedBurner to provide your feeds, you will have noticed a sharp increase lately, as a result of their inclusion.

Pheedo have have created a very useful report, which shows which RSS readers are leading the field and, in which Google has emerged as the #4 online online aggregator overall.

As they say, “This information is valuable to marketers and advertisers because they want to know who is seeing their ads, and HOW they are seeing them. Knowing which RSS readers people are using is important data, and helps marketers inform their RSS marketing decisions and hone their RSS advertising creative and strategies.”

Google Reader Stats Are In - First Look

Putting Feed Buttons on Your Blog

This information is also useful on a practical level of deciding what “blog clutter” buttons to include, or not, in your blog’s sidebar. There are too many to choose from and, not only are too many buttons aesthetically displeasing, I think too many choices would distract users from making any choice.

On the other hand, especially when you are offering feeds to end consumers, who don’t know an RSS feed from their elbow, but who do know what “reading their MyYahoo! page” means, offering these familiar buttons is the most efficient method of encouraging subscription growth.

It therefore seems to me to make some sense to go with only those that are already the most popular and, the top six (NewsGator, MyYahoo!, Bloglines, Google Reader, Rojo, Netvibes, plus a seventh option for “others”), as shown in Pheedo’s pie chart, is probably as many buttons as anyone can stand without it making a right royal mess.

You may want to use less, but I don’t think you’d really want more, unless you know from your own stats that you already have a lot of fans of some other reader subscribed.

In the buttons that I have included above, I will admit that I have substituted some of them, because I like all my “ducks in a row”, i.e. identical styles and sizes of buttons to make it neat, but the quickest and easiest way to create your button buffet is with the iFeedReaders Chicklet Creator.

iFeedReaders also provide a “one button replaces all” function, that you can use instead, or as the seventh option.

Another way to provide that, is with the chicklet creator at FeedBurner, or the similar Quick RSS Links from Blogflux.

AddThis also provide a very nice combined button:

Who is The Prettiest Feed Reader of them All?

This is just my humble opinion, of course, but whilst I’ve tried all the top ones listed, I use Bloglines for preference, as it has all the features that suit my way of working.

That said, Google Reader is now coming a close second. Some people prefer it and I estimate that Google’s share will increase significantly yet, as they add more features.

I do also use MyYahoo!, but only because I can get my daily fix of Garfield on there! So, I use the rest of the space to subscribe to other non-essential, time wasting entertainments. I’m sure others do the same.

Rojo, I personally find cluttered and too slow to load.

And I really like pages like Netvibes (which is also similar to PageFlakes and ProtoPage and, indeed Google Personalized Homepage). The only reason I don’t use these extensively myself, is because I hand created a “personal home page” that resides on my own computer, many years ago to serve the very purpose at which these are aimed. But I can certainly see how anyone who does not know HTML, or who needs something online that can be accessed via any computer, would prefer these options.

Since it appears in the top position, I took another look at NewsGator yesterday to see why it does. Actually, I’d even forgotten that I had an account and a redeeming feature is that it is now free. Not bad, just not my first choice.

While I was there though, I did discover that NewsGator provides an alternative post rating tool that I had not seen before and I like the look of. Worth consideration.