The Death of Google Reader
neil on 27/06/2013 at 6:14 pm, filed under 
If I could track the time I spend on websites I use throughout the day, it would probably look like:
- 99% Google Reader
- .5% OzBargain
- .5% everything else
It was to my surprise and disappointment to learn that Google will be closing Reader in less than a week (July 1). There have been countless articles on why this happened and alternatives that will take Reader’s place but I haven’t seen much on the impact on websites. The chart below shows the declining usage of Google Reader on OzBargain.
Percentage of traffic from Google Reader vs. other rss readers
| Date | Google Reader | Feedly | theoldreader |
| 2009 | 1.21% | 0.00% | 0% |
| 2010 | 1.10% | 0.02% | 0% |
| 2011 | 0.88% | 0.02% | 0% |
| 2012 | 0.69% | 0.02% | 0% |
| Jan 13 |
0.54% | 0.02% | 0% |
| Feb 13 |
0.52% | 0.02% | 0% |
| March 13 |
0.50% | 0.08% | 0% |
| April 13 |
0.43% | 0.09% | 0.01% |
| May 13 |
0.39% | 0.02% | 0.01% |
| June 13 |
0.30% | 0.19% | 0.02% |
It’s clear that Google Reader has been getting less relevant in terms of incoming traffic to OzBargain. Feedly has stepped in and has dramatically improved it’s market share. Are RSS readers dieing?
Percentage of incoming traffic from top sites
A look at our stats show that Whirlpool continues to dominate incoming traffic followed by social networking sites. RSS readers (that we can track) clock up around .5%.
Want to follow the deals via RSS?
- New Deals
- Front Page Deals
- Subscribe to a category such as gaming.
- Subscribe to a store such as DealsDirect.
- Subscribe to a user’s posts such as Scotty’s.