How To Track RSS Subscriptions Using Google Analytics

By Andy Beard | Published: July 25, 2007

One of the most frustrating things about RSS is not being able to track RSS subscription rates from source traffic. There are other problems such as how people interact with your RSS content, but even being able to determine which sources of traffic result in subscribers would be a huge commercial advantage for bloggers, allowing them to focus their efforts on traffic generation strategies that will grow their business.

Hamlet Batista has been doing some digging, and has worked out how to track RSS subscribers based upon the source of traffic, and it even works with Feedburner’s RSS to Email feature.

This is a little technical, and you will have to setup goal tracking as well in Google Analytics, but I am sure for many of my readers this will be something they will be making a high priority.

How to track feed subscriber referrals with Google Analytics

It is likely that this method can’t detect a signup if a user first clicks through to read a feed on Feedburner, and then chooses a subscription option.

As Hamlet says

Of course it is possible that someone might click on the subscription and not complete the process, but I think that knowing where the attempts are coming from should be useful at least. It will help you discover the blogs/sites/forums where you need to concentrate your networking efforts.

Even for those bloggers who concentrate on email subscriptions, I am sure this will still help with another piece of the puzzle.

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10 Comments

  1. Hamlet Batista (3 comments.)
    Posted July 25, 2007 at 3:11 pm | Permalink

    Andy – Thanks for the link. I’m glad you found the post useful

  2. Wizzer (1 comments.)
    Posted July 25, 2007 at 7:21 pm | Permalink

    Seek and ye shall find!! I’ve been toying with this problem for a while and you’re post has solved my problem. Thanks.

    BTW I tagged you today at my blog as part of my tagging game

  3. David Airey :: Graphic Designer (26 comments.)
    Posted July 25, 2007 at 9:35 pm | Permalink

    Thanks for pointing us in Hamlet’s direction, Andy. I’ve read through his article and am going to try it out for myself.

  4. Blog Bloke (3 comments.)
    Posted July 26, 2007 at 5:22 am | Permalink

    Hi Andy. I’m sorry for being off topic but I looked for an email link and couldn’t find one.

    Thanks for trying to mediate over at the house of Rowse. Heh, you and I should get together for a beer sometime and cry over our mutual neglect ;-)

    I’m in the process of migrating over to WordPress and I hope you will consider doing me the honour of being a guest writer once in a blue moon. That would be nice.

    Cheers!

    …BB

  5. Alan (4 comments.)
    Posted July 26, 2007 at 1:38 pm | Permalink

    really useful – thanks

  6. Dollars Blog (1 comments.)
    Posted July 30, 2007 at 3:34 am | Permalink

    You can just use feedburner and get detailed information about RSS subscribers.

  7. Matt (1 comments.)
    Posted August 1, 2007 at 11:41 am | Permalink

    Great post, I wonder why google doesnt share this information

  8. shazad (2 comments.)
    Posted August 28, 2007 at 12:26 am | Permalink

    Google doesnt seem to share much at all i think it wants us to hunt this info down ourselves and say wow thats why i love google .

  9. Money Blue Book (4 comments.)
    Posted August 29, 2007 at 5:47 am | Permalink

    Aha..interesting. I just registered for Google Analytics and installed the script on my blog today…let’s see what information it’ll reveal! So far I use Stat Counter and Google Analytics…aside from paid services like Mint, are there any other better tracker services out there. Free ones perhaps? :)

    - Raymond (MONEY BLUE BOOK)

  10. Marco Richter (1 comments.)
    Posted November 16, 2007 at 5:57 am | Permalink

    I just read through the article and am going to give it a try. As I love Google Analytics as it shows so many metrics which help me increasing my readership – and soon I´ll be able to track my RSS-Subscribtions too. Awesome.

2 Trackbacks

  1. By Weekly Links << Vandelay Website Design on July 28, 2007 at 2:10 am

    [...] How to Track RSS Subscribers Using Google Analytics from Andy Beard. [...]

  2. By The Secret Statistics In Split RSS Feeds - Google Reader | Andy Beard - Niche Marketing on October 15, 2007 at 9:50 am

    [...] isn't the same as tracking RSS subscriptions, in many ways it is better because the tracking only gives you a click on a button, and [...]