More wacky RSS stuff: I mentioned last week that my RSS feed leaped from the low 40ks to mid 50k.
Yesterday, it again popped — to over 71k, before slipping back to 58k.
I have no idea why . . .
If anyone has a clue, feel free to explain.
>
Previously:
RSS Feeds Go Wild (October 22, 1961)
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/10/rss-feeds-go-wild/
Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data, ability to repeat discredited memes, and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Also, be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor even implied. Any irrelevancies you can mention will also be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.
Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. —John Kenneth Galbraith
Retail Sales in Jan rose .4% headline m/o/m, .7% ex auto's, .6% ex auto's and gasoline and .7% at the core. The headline figure was less than expected while the rest were slightly better. But, with respect to non headline sales, because Dec figures were revised lower, taking the two months together were about in line with forecasts overall. Sales rose in electronics, building materials, food/beverages, clothing, sporting goods, dept stores and restaurant/bars and fell interestingly for online retailers, health/personal care, furniture and motor vehicle/parts. Bottom line, headline sales were below expectations due to the greater than expected fall m/o/m...
read more »
Tweet
Facebook
Reddit
Digg this!
October 28th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Mr. Ritholtz, As you may or may not know, RSS Feeds are “Really Simple Syndication” Feeds. In a nut shell something is published via the Internet e.i. “The Big Picture” others can then use this published content and link to it.
So the theory I have is.
1)You had that many people visiting (NOT posting) to your site yesterday, but visiting.
2)Others have used your content on their site (By linking to it) and there by hit your RSS counter, there by combining the two or more on your RSS
3)You linked to a source that has an RSS counter and the reverse of #2 happened.
These are just my quick theories on it, a quick and simple test would be when you post your Daily Reading, try and have at least one link that already has an established RSS and if your Feed jumps – Bingo, it could very likely be a combination of # 2 and/or 3.
But even if it does jump you have to take into account, time of day, day of week AND more importantly, the market has been looking shaky the last couple days, so maybe it is actually 72k people coming to your site to get informed.
Again – these are ONLY MY theories, but I hope that helps
October 28th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
1) CNBC viewers on the sidelines being put to work before month end…
2) Scared bears needing to check in every 15 minutes looking for Barry to give them moral support to short again
3) Bailout Nation readers (when do we get the first updated version?)
4) If the market is down, TBP must be up
5) MSM looking for somebody, anybody who will do actual research and thinking for free
6) Ben Stein “readers” searching for Ben Stein on the Google and ending up here by mistake
7) Measured in gold/Euros/freeze-dried food your readership is actually not making new highs…
8) One word: KKKKKKKKKKramer
9) Because “free” has never been in higher demand. Free from paying, free from agendas, free from politics , free from superficial analysis and free from political correctness
10) Chinese readers looking for a good laugh and an explanation (remember China must always be the last explanation on any growth thesis)
October 28th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Dude,
ALERT! ALERT!
Your site meter popped over 50,000,000 today…
That’s impressive…
October 28th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Karen said there was a guy doing the Full Monty on your site…probably female viewership…
October 28th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
RSS is just really hard to measure. Much like raw hits to a web site is a meaningless metric because of all the noise, RSS is hard to measure who is grabbing it and how often. Users with stand-alone readers on their computer inflate, proxies and aggregators like Google Reader deflate.
October 28th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Is this a daily metric, or a weekly one? My guess is daily.
In any event, does it correlate to the number of blog posts per day? I presume that an RSS notification is generated for each blog post. Perhaps normalizing the RSS feeds to the number of posts that day would impart some sense to the data.
~~~
BR: Dunno, its been pretty constant for months and months, and then boom!
October 28th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Perhaps it was wrong. Happens.
October 28th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Another possibility: various botnets use RSS feeds to amass new content, which they turn around and post on hijacked or domain-squatting sites to generate search hits -> traffic -> ad revenue. I’ve seen my own content show up, verbatim, on various bogus sites. This sort of activity could conceivably generate RSS subscriptions en masse.
October 28th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
I am not sure if you or anyone else noticed that at Google Reader a new feature was added recently that lists a few feeds that are not already in your list. It’s some kind of context-sensitive correlation to what you are already reading.
I suspect that a large number of people who are subscribed to other similar RSS feeds had your feed show up in the recommended list and quickly added your feed to their list.
Then… and this happens to me a lot… the next day when they see 20-30 posts and some of them multiple pages long, they unsubscribe. TLDR. Who has the time?
Here’s a link to Google’s ‘help’ about the new ‘explore’ feature.
http://www.google.com/support/reader/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=164681
October 28th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Barry, get your developers to implement google analytics and you will know exactly what your users/visitors are doing! Free and easy to implement.
http://www.google.com/analytics/tour.html
October 28th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Not exactly. I don’t allow google analytics to do anything with my computer. ;^)
NoScript FTW…
October 28th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
They do it with mirrors.
October 28th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Unscientific observation: You did a couple things with Bloomberg and each time I THINK is when you saw the pop.
October 28th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
Well, it’s a good thing more people are reading you Barry.
Who knows, maybe the drop at CNBC.
Maybe the linking that f420d described.
Or maybe, just maybe, the tide has turned in social mood…optimism fading, being realistic part of the “new normal”
October 28th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
I wonder if some of it is double count. I have Safari and Firefox. The first thing Firefox does is copy all my bookmarks and RSS feed and then updates the feeds. 1 laptop, 2 programs doing the same thing…? Also, I get my rss on my iphone because it copies all my Safari bookmarks and RSS. So now, maybe I count as 3? I would be suspicious of the RSS number.
October 28th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Damien – Good catch on the Bloomberg thing, that would fit into my theory too, maybe Mr. Ritholtz needs to set up another link like the previous ones. But at this point until things are tested it is ONLY a guess.
@Ben22 “Optimism fading” Huh???????? What about all the green shoots? And to think I was going to go out and buy a 2010 Humvie, thanks for killing the mood PARTY POOPER…….. JK :)
October 28th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
Cause, YOU’RE A STUD!!
October 28th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Because I included the TBP in my blogroll? LOL
October 28th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
your stats from Alexa…
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ritholtz.com%2Fblog
traffic rank chart shows your trading sideways, may be a little bullish, but not much.
October 28th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
Maybe it was that comment about “tea bagging”. I once used the word “sexploitation” in my blog and the hit count skyrocketed…interestingly, mainly from the Middle East.
October 29th, 2009 at 7:06 am
Feedburner is testing a new quantitative easing program .