It is nice to finally see one of the mainstream blogs pointing out that it is hard to track readership numbers from Google Reader. Techcrunch have been looking at a report from Hitwise
But it’s hard to know exactly how popular it’s gotten. FeedBurner doesn’t track it yet, so we can’t compare the subscriber numbers to other readers. We’ve noticed a significant jump in referrals from Google Reader, though. Enough to suggest that it is as large or larger than Bloglines already.
This slant is slightly incorrect
FeedBurner Can’t Track It Yet
It isn’t FeedBurner’s fault that they are not providing readership data for Google Reader as they state clearly in their interface.
This isn’t a technical hurdle, lots of very small companies that provide desktop or web based RSS readers supply this data to FeedBurner.
It seems obvious to me that whilst Google are happy to collect lots of data, and even give you fancy graphs of your own reading habits, they are not inclined to give this information to publishers.
Effectively, once your content is picked up by Google, it enters a black hole.
