4 ms·

There'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

There'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 reading the article, whereas search traffic is generally high intent and is at least resulting in eyeballs on the site, if not actual readers.

sharkjacobs 5mo ago
> 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.
- rafram 5mo ago
  That very likely won't work. RSS readers that are designed to work offline predownload everything.
protocolture 5mo ago
>There's a ton of selection bias going on here. The data doesnt purport to cover any more than the 1 website. Its not like there are any generalisations about other websites derived from the data. Its just "These are where my hits come from"
- nofriend 5mo ago
  the only reason anyone would be interested in this result is because of the implication that it generalizes to other sites.
  - protocolture 5mo ago
    The only generalisation here is that one.
  - johanyc 5mo ago
    No. I knew it's data point for one website only and I'm still interested.
frumiousirc 5mo ago
Right, I'd say RSS numbers (for a given blog post) mostly reflect cumulative visitors over the lifetime of the RSS feed while number of clicks coming in from a search engine reflect instantaneous popularity. Same pattern as say a sub-reddit subscriber count compared to the number of nicks currently in an associated IRC channel, though IRC lurkers soften that distinction.

sharkjacobs 5mo ago

> 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.

rafram 5mo ago
That very likely won't work. RSS readers that are designed to work offline predownload everything.

protocolture 5mo ago

>There's a ton of selection bias going on here. The data doesnt purport to cover any more than the 1 website. Its not like there are any generalisations about other websites derived from the data. Its just "These are where my hits come from"

nofriend 5mo ago
the only reason anyone would be interested in this result is because of the implication that it generalizes to other sites.
- protocolture 5mo ago
  The only generalisation here is that one.
- johanyc 5mo ago
  No. I knew it's data point for one website only and I'm still interested.

frumiousirc 5mo ago

Right, I'd say RSS numbers (for a given blog post) mostly reflect cumulative visitors over the lifetime of the RSS feed while number of clicks coming in from a search engine reflect instantaneous popularity. Same pattern as say a sub-reddit subscriber count compared to the number of nicks currently in an associated IRC channel, though IRC lurkers soften that distinction.