My RSS reader downloads a local copy of posts so I can read offline (Reeder). I imagine that would trigger his analytics.
RSS feeds send me more traffic than Google
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Re: RSS feeds send me more traffic than Google
#52My RSS reader downloads a local copy of posts so I can read offline (Reeder). I imagine that would trigger his analytics.
Does it download the web version, or does it copy the content from the RSS feed itself? I believe that Terence's RSS feed includes a full copy of the content you'd see from visiting his site.
Re: RSS feeds send me more traffic than Google
#53There's a ton of selection bias going on here. Terence writes mostly about open web standards and topics that would be of significant interest to folks with an RSS feed reader. Also, RSS readers are generally automated. I know I've had them around for years pulling in articles that I never read. Like a podcast "listen" is actually just an automated download, RSS traffic does not necessarily involve anyone actually re…
> RSS readers are generally automated. I know I've had them around for years pulling in articles that I never read They try to address that > I added RSS and Newsletter tracking. These data are very lossy. If someone is subscribed to my RSS feed and opens a post and their client downloads a lazy-loaded image at the end of the post, I get a hit.
That very likely won't work. RSS readers that are designed to work offline predownload everything.
Re: RSS feeds send me more traffic than Google
#54Is it possible that the users who used to find us through Google are now satisfied with AI chat summaries and no longer feel the need to click through to the actual page? Meanwhile, the long-time users who subscribed via RSS are still showing up like they always have. If this is the case, it’s a bit of a sad reality for content creators.
Yes. It caused a major drop in CTR for search. Google Zero is the term for it. It’s murderous for information websites. On my side, traffic is down roughly 70% on the website I live from. It’s still part of the training data though. Not that I consented to this.
Do you get attribution from the content they show from your sites at all? Did you notice more direct traffic by any chance?
Re: RSS feeds send me more traffic than Google
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. It caused a major drop in CTR for search. Google Zero is the term for it. It’s murderous for information websites. On my side, traffic is down roughly 70% on the website I live from. It’s still part of the training data though. Not that I consented to this.
Do you get attribution from the content they show from your sites at all? Did you notice more direct traffic by any chance?
Very rarely. AI traffic is a tiny tiny fraction of total traffic. ChatGPT and Gemini mostly spit out unattributed information, except when queries trigger a web search.
I notice many 404s from ChatGPT to hallucinated URLs on my website. Sometimes it hallucinates guides about topics I never covered. So I'm getting cited for things I didn't even say!
I also notice that for other topics, the cited sources are crap. The best shaver is a Braun shaver according to Braun.com, and two comments on a 6 years old reddit thread about a different topic.
Re: RSS feeds send me more traffic than Google
#56How else to notify readers? RSS is quite good. Corporations do not like it though, because they want to control spread of information. They prefer you re-enter page, be targeted with more ads, or spoonfed with their news algorithm on-site. However RSS only works, if someone knows about your page. YouTube is quite good with RSS though. You can have channel RSS, be notified about new videos, while channels still are di…
I have to admit my interest rapidly waned when I realized I'd have to inspect a SQL database to look at this. Is it so enormous that a regular text file won't work?
Re: RSS feeds send me more traffic than Google
#57How else to notify readers? RSS is quite good. Corporations do not like it though, because they want to control spread of information. They prefer you re-enter page, be targeted with more ads, or spoonfed with their news algorithm on-site. However RSS only works, if someone knows about your page. YouTube is quite good with RSS though. You can have channel RSS, be notified about new videos, while channels still are di…
In some parallel universe, the RSS is tightly integrated with browser and main way to "subscribe" to site's updates
In that parallel universe web sites stop publishing RSS because they are overwhelmed with the polling traffic. The world really does need something like ActivityPub as much as Dave Winer denies it.
RSS has two polling speeds: too fast and too slow and it can even be both at the same time.
Re: RSS feeds send me more traffic than Google
#58Note I discover content with an RSS reader and then post it to HN and sometimes it frontpages and that traffic ought to be attributed to RSS when it comes to decisions like "should we publish RSS?"
Re: RSS feeds send me more traffic than Google
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
In some parallel universe, the RSS is tightly integrated with browser and main way to "subscribe" to site's updates
In that parallel universe web sites stop publishing RSS because they are overwhelmed with the polling traffic. The world really does need something like ActivityPub as much as Dave Winer denies it. RSS has two polling speeds: too fast and too slow and it can even be both at the same time.
CDNs exist, as well as http cache headers, though.
Re: RSS feeds send me more traffic than Google
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
In some parallel universe, the RSS is tightly integrated with browser and main way to "subscribe" to site's updates
In that parallel universe web sites stop publishing RSS because they are overwhelmed with the polling traffic. The world really does need something like ActivityPub as much as Dave Winer denies it. RSS has two polling speeds: too fast and too slow and it can even be both at the same time.
There are rss aggregators that poll every feed occasionally, then combine them into a single feed for each person to consume.
Nostr works on a similar basis but you push to the aggregator instead of them pulling.