While you should avoid tricking visitors with artificial numbers, this video does give an hint that FeedBurner numbers are very easy to manipulate.
Joop shares a simple hack that will enable anyone to artificially inflate the FeedBurner subscriber count of any RSS feed that’s syndicated via FeedBurner.
Some may feel that the onus lies on Google & FeedBurner to provide a fix for this issue but that’s not the case because FeedBurner is simply adding the count - the actual numbers are provided by aggregators like Netvibes, Newsgator, Bloglines, etc.
Related: Know everything about FeedBurner
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/blogging/increase-feedburner-subscriber-count/4121/
web: http://www.labnol.org/ email: amit@labnol.org
Reader Comments
cool hack man..thanks for this..you should have published this tips few days back…I cold have been the blogging idol organized by dailyblogtips.com.
Written by Roshan Bhattarai on 08.04.08
This completely takes the value out of a feedcount. People like us who value our subscribers and not the number they collectively make suffer because people like to cheat.
I can’t see the video because YouTube (or whatever service the video is on) is banned at work.
I hope Google/Feedburner fix this soon. A feed count is a good way to judge the quality and longetevity of a site.
Written by Rich on 08.04.08
Great tip…i’ll definitely be checking it out
Written by JohnnyV on 08.04.08
Amit,
I always do believe that life is NOT a hack, never use tricks to manipulate / tilt the things in my favor!
Not this is our pious duty to report the issue to the appropriate authority to make the web clean and honets?! : )
Thanks for the concern and raising the very issue.
Cheers : )
Written by Piyush K on 08.04.08
Good Hack….
So are using this hack in DI???
Written by Snehasis on 08.04.08
So Joop has decided not to allow several thousands like you to freely show his video on their blogs. It can now be seen only via his page.Sounds reasonable :)
Written by Rajesh on 08.05.08
This might raise concerns to advertisers and at some time in future they will stop considering the feed count .
Written by Kashif on 08.05.08
I don’t think this is still working.
Written by Navin on 08.05.08
There is no real value in this, what’s the point? It doesn’t actually make more people read your feed. All it does is prove that you’re not satisfied with how many people are subscribed, which means that you should be working harder to promote your site and producing better content.
In the short term it may look more attractive to advertisers or potential new readers if you have more “subscribers”, but if publishers do this eventually everyone will catch on and not pay any attention to subscriber counts. And what about if this ever stops working? Then your subscriber count will drop way down, and that doesn’t look good at all!
Written by Blake on 08.11.08
doesn’t work anymore..fixed by feedburner :)
Written by ani on 08.13.08
yeah…fixed by feedburner :(
Written by coolman on 08.22.08
So it doesnt work anymore?
Does anyone know any other method, apparently there is quickie way that is just to manipuliate the script itself.
i need it for my blog. its very lonely. its about celebrities, gossip and news. I’d appreciate your opinion on web site.
Written by michael on 05.12.09