Recently I was discussing how the disparity of numbers in analytics was causing me some aggravation. After digging a little deeper I think I found part of the source of my frustration, the Google Desktop Reader.
Here’s a screenshot from feedburner
The two lines I want to draw your attention to are Google Desktop. If someone has Google Desktop installed and is using the web clips a bit of background voodoo happens. Web clips autodiscovers RSS feeds and ads them from any site you visit. The subscription is automatic and completely out of the users control. IIRC if you don’t ever click or go back to the site it will automatically unsubscribe you at some point in the future.
This all comes back to Google personalized search strategy. Get the webmasters and web publishers to see an advantage to getting more people using Google’s products (see don’t become a Google traffic addict). I’m sure Google (and vista) would content most people don’t “get” RSS and this introduces them slowly to the benefits of the technology, and I will conceed that point. However the end user really needs to have more control over how/what is happening. For example it’s not out of the realm of possibility to accidentally wind up on porn site with RSS and start getting streaming porn headlines in your web clips section. The ability to directly influence what appears there and to simply leave it up to the machine to figure it out is a major flaw/oversight.
So if you’re playing the RSS game right now Google Desktop/Web Clips can be used to boost up your subscriber base, something to think about.
Added:
Patrick is talking about this too so check it out, Why Digg inflates your subscribers.
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{ 4 comments }
Sounds like someone had a bad experience after visiting fishtacos.com.
Rhea – No one ever has a bad experience at fishtacos…
I don’t use google desktop but is this all really a bad thing? If you are getting signed up with a lot of porn feeds you obviously go to the sites anyway, you might find you like having it there.
If you don’t go back to the site it will take it off… how long does it take to get unsubscribed? If it’s months I could see the problem… but if it was weekly, bi-weekly…
Plus you could always just stop using google desktop if, say, you had kids you don’t want seeing that… but then again, you could catch your kids if they are getting you signed up for such feeds. Shrug
-Wingnut
Happens to be the only shopping search engine which allows merchants to define their own attributes (optional fields). It is also formerly known as Froogle and if you have any product that can be sold online, you have no excuse to not use this service. It’s free, and Google is trying to promote it’s usage. If you want better results on the shopping engines, try optimizing your feed – it’s no longer good enough to just post all your products and expect your listings to be found.
There is a new opportunity that can be had for online retailers, and it’s known as the “Onebox” result. To learn more about this great way to drive targeted traffic, visit OneBoxer a fantastic blog that covers all angles better than I can.
Recently, Google made more requirements on a generic level, but there may be more if you are within a specific product category:
* brand
* condition
* description
* expiration_date
* id
* image_link
* link
* price
* product_type
* title
Understandibly, some merchants are upset at this since they have thousands of products that now need more information, and some products may not have all of the required fields (expiration date, for example).
So how can you take advantage of this?
Some people will search by color, some by material and others by style. All of these are fantastic opportunities to get your product in front of a consumer who is ready to buy. It will take some time to create and get all the tweaks worked out, but it is well worth it.
After reading this post I been monitoring my feed stats much more closely and yesterday I had a 30 new subscribers just from google desktop. Normally I would be happy to see any thing in the green but this makes it sorta watered down…
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