What’s up with Google’s Feedburner losing RSS subscribers? I’m talking thousands of them!
When I first created my blog, I had it hosted somewhere else and a URL that was forwarded to that site with masking.
When I finally moved it to it’s permanent (or at least as permanent as things get in this techno world), I temporarily used another URL until it was up and running, but being unsure of the ramifications of moving the DNS, I waited.
Well you know how it goes when something ain’t broke, don’t fix it! So I waited some more, building a following and feed subscribers along the way.
Finally, just last week, I moved the DNS of MLMDreamSaver.com to it’s home, no longer to be forwarded, and at first breathed a sigh of relief as nothing bad seemed to happen…..
…..until I realized that the site was not coming up and that I had to clear my cache on my browser in order to see it — how many of my followers were experiencing that?!?!? I then wrote a post hoping that somehow people could see from posting headers they should clear their cache — sheesh! I hope that didn’t mess up too many people!
ANYWAY, back to the issue at hand HERE, and that is that when I noticed that when I was leaving comments after subscribing to commentLuv, the feed seemed to be stuck on a post from a few days prior.
Realizing the commentLuv was getting it’s feed from feedburner, I decided that perhaps it would be a good idea to change the original feed URL to the new one (albeit it should have made no difference since the feed ADDRESS was not changing!).
At any rate, this seemed to make no difference at all in the stale posts on the comment feeds, and so I changed it back thinking maybe that it would catch up with the original feed soon….
After a while, nothing. So, knowing that the MLMDreamSaver name is at least more familiar to people and not as long as the ‘temporary’ name I had my site hosted under for a while (YourNetworkMarketingTraining.com), I once more changed it back thinking eventually it would all straighten itself out.
Well my immediate reaction was OH NO! My subscriber count DROPPED from 132 to 9!!!!!
WHAT!?
Of course I went straight to the forum to register the question of how this had occurred and what I could do to fix it.
Then I was quickly disappointed to see many many other such complaints lodged there for the same problem, some losing over 20,000 subscribers! AND WITH NO RESPONSE FROM GOOGLE OVER MONTHS!
Here is a post I found on the conundrum….. and then finally getting to writing up this warning and rechecking for the links, as I was going back to the forum page. I see a recent update on Feedburner FROM JUST YESTERDAY ….
So it seems that the impression of lost subscribers is not quite what it appears….. but, I would still be careful of changes you make to your original feed URL – don’t touch it if you don’t have to but if you do just beware your count might end up looking pretty screwey!
Wishing You Every Success!
This is an awful thing to experience and can be very stressful for those who have many subscribers. I am glad the last link that you provided for the update lightens up the stress load to give mild sigh of relief.
Thanks Nelly! I am so happy that I did run across that link from just today — as it happens I noticed it after submitting my post to the forums about the problem. I figure it’s something worthwhile to bring up in case people notice this drop and panic, that maybe it’s not as bad as it seems. I’m glad first off that I didn’t have THAT many subscribers as some did, so the level of panic was not as severe, and that I DID find that last post!
Thanks again for your comment and support!
Hi Vicki!
Thanks so much for sharing your article with me today & for your ‘heads up’…I really appreciate it.
I too, find myself tweaking my blog…especially plugins, lol. But, my original feed, I have never messed around with changing it.
Have a pleasant day…your tribal friend Steven Suchar
Hi Steven! Sure thing – I am getting some weird results mostly with tweaking my blog plugins and theme settings, almost ready to quit playing around and leave it alone for a while! But at least the current feed is appearing in comments I leave on others’ blogs, and even some have reappeared in my feed subscriber count. What a wacky world of web tools we have!
Wishing You a Wonderful Day!
Vicki,
Thanks once again for opening our eyes with your very rich content.
Louis
Thank You Louis! Just would hate anyone else to have that scare, if I can help anyone to avoid it by just knowing the bits and pieces I picked up after my panic then that will make it worthwhile to me!
Have an Awesome Week!
Thank you for this post! I am so glad to know that I am not the only one having issues with feedburner and comluv. I have spent most of the past week trying to figure out these issues, I even posted about it in my last blog post. It is very stressful to deal with and I’m sorry to hear that you have been stressed with it too.
Have a great weekend!
.-= Stacy´s last blog ..New Blogger Tips =-.
Thanks Stacy!
I did get a bit stressed out, and I think I had added too many variables to the mix!
But that’s what propelled me to keep looking until I found something, AND I did post a comment to CommentLuv and although their response was something like they had no control due to the feeds they receive, but oddly enough my comment feeds seemed to be corrected the very next day!
So far so good these days, but good luck to you!
Enjoy your weekend as well!
Hey Vicki! Thanks for sharing your experience with Feedburner. I am a little skeptical of “hitching my horse to the Google post”, with all the negative things I’m getting from friends. I use a direct feed to ComLuv to side-step Feedburner.
As I read this post, I put myself in your shoes (figuratively) and I was not a happy camper.
I’m glad it all worked out and you did not lose subscribers.
Thanks again for sharing.
-James
.-= James Hampton´s last blog ..Stop Procrastinating – Start Your Home Based Business! =-.
Hi James!
Thank you for stopping by and commenting! I know well what you mean about being the Google skeptic, and thanks for tipping me off that you can do a direct feed to ComLuv without using Feedburner, I didn’t realize that!
Wishing You Every Success!
Hi Vicki,
I think this must be part of changing the original feed process as well, since when I moved from Blogger to WordPress a few days ago my feedburner subscribers went from 1784 to 771. I was horrified. The subscribers being counted were my email subscribers. Were my RSS subscribers getting my feed?
Hearing that your numbers returned to normal after changing your original feed gives me hope that mine will do the same. I’ll keep my fingers crossed!
Good Luck Kathryn! I hope it turns out well for you, that’s a lot of subscribers to ‘lose’ even hoping that they aren’t really lost!
Wishing You Tremendous Success,
hi Vicki; believe it or not, I ‘ve been struggling to find this information since yesterday. I changed some settings in my RSS and Feedburner and since I am not a tech geek I made it worse! Thanks for your post!
Hi Steven! I’m glad this helped and came along at the right time! I hope you’ve seen better results by now, mine seem to have straightened themselves out for the most part, but it certainly led me to give less credence to these numbers!
Thanks for stopping by and commenting!
Wishing You Tremendous Success,