Sadly, this site has become somewhat neglected of late.

This is due to a number of factors.  The old health hasn’t been the best and I am still involved in trying to wind up my company.  I thought the latter would be a straightforward matter of informing my clients, and then putting a lock on the door.  Life isn’t that simple, apparently.

The main site at Head Rambles is doing quite well at the moment.  In these stringent times, it is becoming more and more of a lifeline to support the ailing income, so it has to be nurtured with great care and attention.

One aspect of blogs [like Grandad, I hate that word with a vengeance] that has me baffled is the RSS business.

After nearly three years fo running Head Rambles and nine years of running my own web based business, you would think I would be up to speed on all aspects, but I’m not.

What confuses me is the concept of Reach vs Subscribers.

Yesterday, for example, HR had 472 subscribers.  That should be self-evident in its meaning and I assume it to indicate that 472 people have subscribed to the feed from the site?  Maybe I’m wrong?

The one that confuses me though is ‘Reach’.  Yesterday, HR had a ‘reach’ of 131.  What the hell does that mean?  Is it that of the 472 subscribers, 131 actually used the link?  Does it mean that 341 didn’t click the link, because they were out shopping or were dead or something?

This is a graph of Subscribers and Reach over a period of time.  As you can see, there are points where Reach [the blue line] has dropped almost through the floor.  What the hell happened at those points?

Also, Subscribers seems to have a life of its own.  I would assume that if ‘Subscribers’ is what I think it is, then it would vary plus or minus a few per day, as people joined or left.  Yet there are occasions where it can drop by as much as 100 in a single day and recover a few days later.  What is going on there?

Any ideas would be welcome……