RSS Subscriber Counts from Apache Logs | Website Analytics

Determining RSS Feed Subscriber Numbers

If you haven't implemented a feed management service such as FeedBurner, you may be interested in discovering the number of individuals subscribing to your RSS feeds. This method is also effective for identifying subscriber counts for specific categories or comment feeds on your website, which are typically not routed through FeedBurner.

How Feed Readers Reveal Subscriber Counts

Many popular feed readers, including Google Reader and Netvibes, actually disclose the subscriber count during the request for your feed. The process involves examining your website's access log files.

Locating Your Apache Logfile

First, you must pinpoint the location of your Apache logfile, commonly named access_log or access.log. The file's location varies depending on your distribution and hosting provider. Consider these starting points, but be prepared to search further.

Default location on Ubuntu:

/var/log/apache2/access.log

Default location on MediaTemple DV:

/var/www/vhosts//statistics/logs/access_log

Default location on Dreamhost:

~/logs//http/access.log

Using Grep to Extract Subscriber Data

Once you've located the logfile, you can utilize the grep command to search for the keyword "subscribers," which is commonly used by feed readers to indicate the subscriber count. A simple command to begin with is:

grep -i subscribers access_log

To refine the search and identify subscribers for a specific feed, you can pipe the output through a second grep command, focusing on that particular RSS feed.

grep -i subscribers access_log | grep -i '/howtogeek/feed/'

Example Log Output

Here’s an illustration of the results obtained from my personal blog (which requires more frequent updates):

209.85.238.9 - - [28/Aug/2007:06:08:23 -0700] "GET /howtogeek/feed/ HTTP/1.1" 302 572 "-" "Feedfetcher-Google; (+http://www.google.com/feedfetcher.html; 52 subscribers; feed-id=13671896334760112923)"

193.189.143.237 - - [28/Aug/2007:06:12:32 -0700] "GET /howtogeek/feed/ HTTP/1.0" 302 535 "-" "Netvibes (http://www.netvibes.com/; 2 subscribers)"

64.78.155.100 - - [28/Aug/2007:06:14:40 -0700] "GET /howtogeek/feed/ HTTP/1.1" 302 535 "-" "NewsGatorOnline/2.0 (http://www.newsgator.com; 2 subscribers)"

As highlighted, the subscriber count from these three feed readers totals 56. My other blog, Mysticgeek, demonstrates a significantly higher number of Google subscribers:

209.85.238.9 - - [28/Aug/2007:05:57:25 -0700] "GET /mysticgeek/feed/ HTTP/1.1" 302 568 "-" "Feedfetcher-Google; (+http://www.google.com/feedfetcher.html; 111 subscribers; feed-id=5433036316661303107)"

Perhaps I should emulate that success and prioritize updating my personal blog… although that would mean less time dedicated to article creation.