I’m This Close to Dropping Google Reader
March 28th, 2007 by Michael Gray in ToolsIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Read my top posts or learn more about Michael Gray. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
Look I’m already annoyed at reading the regurged news, but there are some feeds I have to subscribe to, but dammit google reader when I mark it read I’m done with it, don’t show it to me as new again. I’ve marked some feeds read half a dozen times already today, stop wasting my time doing the same thing over and over, I have better things to do. You’ve got more brainpower than it took to send a man to the moon, fix the damn problem or I’m dropping you.
Sphere It
March 29th, 2007 at 12:36 am
What are some example feeds where you saw this? I believe that if a site owner republishes a post with a different url, Reader plays it safe and shows it to you again.
March 29th, 2007 at 12:37 am
FYI, it could be an issue with the newsfeed itself. I know that on my feed at ScreenRant.com I need to fix an issue where it shows a post as new if someone adds a comment to it.
Check out some of the offending feeds in another newsreader like bloglines and see if it still happens.
Vic
March 29th, 2007 at 12:48 am
here’s a screen shot things I’ve marked read already
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=438315701&size=o
March 29th, 2007 at 2:24 am
Amusingly, I often get repeats on the Wolf-Howl feed
Particularly ‘Things you May Have Missed’ posts.
No idea what is causing it as there doesn’t seem to be any ‘changed’ text (NetNewsWire will unmark a post as read if it changes)
(Geez, lad, only 56 unread? I have 4606 unread as I type. I don’t think you are serious about reading blogs … j/k!! )
March 29th, 2007 at 5:13 am
I’ve dropped Google Reader a few months back, and decided to go back to Bloglines. Plus the good thing about Bloglines is their customer support, see here: http://www.seoprinciple.com/switching-back-to-bloglines/22/
March 29th, 2007 at 8:05 am
This can be fixed. I forget how, but it’s somewhere in your options. I had the same problem until I poked it with a stick until it caved.
March 29th, 2007 at 8:57 am
I don’t have this issue with Google Reader. My issue has to do with how long it takes Google Reader to realize a feed has been updated. In a word: forever!
March 29th, 2007 at 10:02 am
especially when restoring a firefox session, you have to log out of google reader and log back in again
March 29th, 2007 at 10:03 am
btw derick, i agree - google reader is SLOW to update.. this alone can be a dealbreaker — one reason we use RSS is to be updated when content changes, not just to aggregate content
March 29th, 2007 at 10:04 am
Matt - What is the point of trying to eliminate bad press from SEO blogs? Does what Michael Gray and others say really influence Google’s reputation? (just wondering)
Sage as a Firefox extension works for me. I want to be as non web 2.0 as possible, where I travel and what I look at online is none of Google’s business. No thanks to 80% of your free stuff.
March 29th, 2007 at 10:05 am
Sorry to hear that Reader’s giving you trouble. We haven’t seen many other reports of read items not sticking. It doesn’t appear to be an issue of the site re-posting content with a different URL, e.g. the Lifehacker feed only had one item with the title “Office Supplies Fetish: Power plug ID labels.”
When items get marked as read, do you see a red “Oops…” message at the top of the screen? We’ve heard of that happening, especially when returning to Reader after Firefox’s session restore, though a fix should have been release a few weeks ago.
Mihai Parparita
Google Reader Engineer
March 29th, 2007 at 10:54 am
I use bumpzee as my new feed reader.
March 29th, 2007 at 11:10 am
I have had the same issue with Google Reader. It keeps showing old feeds as unread and it’s really annoying. I wouldn’t have reported it if I didn’t see this post so I bet a lot of other people are experiencing this. It’s my first blog reader so I’d rather not move to another one but if it keeps doing this, I definitely will.
I don’t think the point is to bash Google Reader or its ‘representatives’ but to figure out why it’s happening, if it’s a bug and if so, fix it.
March 29th, 2007 at 11:47 am
I’m this close to dropping Graywolf from my Google reader.
Starting too see too many whiney posts in which the only purpose is to complain without offering any benefit to the reader… “boo-hoo, I’m not on the front page of Digg”, “I had to click a headline twice in my feed reader”, “I’m still not on the front page of Digg, must be a conspiracy”.
So what? We all read a lot of feeds. We all have better things to do than to click a headline twice (or to click on a post that complains about it). Try a different reader. Not on the front page of Digg. A lot of blogs aren’t. Is that the only way to maximize SEO and get exposure? You’d think so considering the number of complaints about it recently.
Don’t get me wrong. You have many excellent posts that provide much benefit to your readers. These recent rants, not so much. Please focus on the former, not the latter.
March 29th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
Hey Mihai, when I get the red “oops” thing I go do something else since I know it’s not working. It’s possible I am restarting firefox between reads, but it’s a case of few hours not a few minutes.
March 29th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
I’m having this problem too. I’ve been noticing it a lot with my Lifehacker feed. I’ll click through every post but it doesn’t update that it’s been read. I know it happens with other feeds, too, but I just haven’t paid that much attention to it to remember which ones…
March 29th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Amen! And no search feature?!?!?! What if I want to find a story I saw days ago but forgot to ’star’……
And along those lines, I’m about to give up on the Webmaster Tool.. See my open letter!
http://www.passion2publish.com/2007/03/frustrated_with.html
March 29th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
FYI, this post just came up as new AGAIN on Bloglines.
Vic
March 29th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
It’s hard to debug this, but especially if you restarted Firefox and Reader was restored by its saved session feature, I would recommend signing out and back in to your Google Account. We’re still investigating a better to that problem.
Mihai Parparita
Google Reader Engineer
March 29th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
There are three or four tabs I always keep open gmail, and google reader being two of them. I leave them open when I shut down firefox because I’m lazy and don’t want to reopen them. So you think my restarting and the session restore is causing the problem?
March 29th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
We think we have a fix for the session restore issue, and it should be getting pushed in the next few days. I’ll add another comment once it’s live.
Mihai Parparita
Google Reader Engineer
March 29th, 2007 at 7:37 pm
sweet thanks for looking into it so promptly
April 4th, 2007 at 11:27 pm
The fix for the session restore issue should be live now. Please let me know if you have any other problems with Reader.
Mihai Parparita
Google Reader Engineer
April 5th, 2007 at 6:48 am
cool thank you.