I checked my Feedburner subscriber count on April 2nd and was surprised to see that the number of RSS subscribers had dropped from around 1800 to around 1100. The next day, my subscriber count decreased again, this time to around 700. Today, my Feedburner statistics increased slightly to around 1000 subscribers. So, in the course of three days I lost around 40% of my loyal readers, according to Google Feedburner. Will I get these subscribers back? Will my Google subscriber count return to normal? Why did my Feedburner count drop in the first place? Let’s explore the issue and try to answer these critical questions.

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With the recent Feedburner service outage, many sites across the Web experienced severe drops in their Feedburner subscriber counts. Apparently, Google is requiring all Feedburner accounts to be transferred over to Google by the end of February. In the midst of this mass migration, chaotic subscriber data has been reported to include everything from dramatic count drops and fluctuating reach statistics to zero-count values and dreaded “N/A” subscriber-count errors. Obviously, displaying erroneous subscriber-count data on your site is not a good thing. Fortunately, there are several ways to ensure that this doesn’t happen.

Over at CSS Newbie, author Rob Glazebrook weighs in with an excellent point about covering your bases when displaying your Feedburner subscriber count. As explained in the article, Feedburner’s handy API makes it easy to tap your data and display your subscriber count on your blog. Despite its best intentions, however, Feedburner occasionally returns inaccurate data or even no data at all for the subscriber count. For those of us who care about the accuracy of our publicly displayed feed statistics, displaying information like this on your site is simply unacceptable:

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Recently, I received a bizarre email accusing me of calling someone out on their fake Feedburner subscriber count. Apparently, some desperate blogger had been claiming to have something like 30,000 Feedburner subscribers when in reality they only had around 700. From what I could tell, the fraudulent site was displaying a counterfeit Feedburner subscriber-count badge using some fancy CSS image-replacement or something. Whatever. I really could care less, but the information contained in the email got me thinking:

Providing an easy way for visitors to verify your subscriber count is a good idea..

Enabling visitors to quickly and easily verify your claimed subscriber count fosters a sense of credibility and legitimacy concerning you and your site. Especially for larger feed counts, validating your claim removes doubt, improves perception, and solidifies reputation. Without some sort of verification, new visitors to your site have no practical way of determining the validity of your claim. Reassuring your guests with an official “verification” link is an excellent way to demonstrate your authenticity and sincerity. Users may or may not actually click on the link, but its mere presence provides a clear signal of your site’s integrity. You know, like saying “look, this is the real McCoy — I’m not faking popularity for personal gain.”

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