Older Known Issues & Workarounds

This is the full list of Known Issues & Workarounds that used to be posted to a Page in the FeedBurner Help Group. It is provided in this blog for reference; the prior Page will no longer be updated and all future updates will appear in this blog (of course).

• 23-JAN 2009: Publishers who have recently moved to Google Accounts may have noticed a significant drop in reported subscriber stats for all feeds. We are actively investigating this issue.
  
  UPDATE: As of 25-JAN, subscriber numbers should be much closer to normal for newly migrated feeds.
  
  
• 22-JAN 2009: Some feed chicklets and analytics changed to reporting 0 overnight - these are being updated and you should see correct amounts rolled in throughout the day.
  
  UPDATE: This issue should be resolved for all FeedCount images.
  
  
• 20-JAN 2009: Publishers who believe they successfully completed moving their accounts to Google, but who think one or more feeds are not listed when they sign into FeedBurner using their Google Account: we are working on a one-time fix to redisplay these missing feeds. This fix should be deployed in the next 48-72 hours and should restore any feeds not displayed on the My Feeds page.
  
  UPDATE: Most accounts affected by this issue have been corrected; a few remain and will be updated shortly.
  
  
• 9-JAN 2009: [WORKAROUND] Multiple publishers who upgraded to WordPress 2.7 have reported issues with feed "read timeout errors" that cause their FeedBurner feeds to not update quickly if they use our FeedSmith plugin or have written their own redirection rules in .htaccess configuration file. We are still investigating, but one workaround that seems effective is for publishers who also use the Yet Another Related Posts (YARP) plugin. This WordPress Support Forums post details a settings change that seems to resolve the issue.
  
  
• 2-JAN 2009: FeedFlare links are again not displaying on feeds and sites powered by feedproxy.google.com feeds. We plan to have a fix in place as soon as possible.
  
  UPDATE: This issue is resolved. FeedFlare should now appear in the feed and on your website for all feedproxy.google.com-based feeds.
  
  
• 1-JAN 2009: We discovered that if you have a username in a feedburner.com account that includes a hyphen ("-") character, you will not be able to successfully move your feeds from feedburner.com to a Google account, as described in our FAQ. A fix is in place for this issue and will be deployed very soon.
  
  UPDATE: This issue is resolved.
  
  
• 30-DEC 2008: If you use our MyBrand service to offer feeds using your own domain name, and your domain name contains hyphens (-), MyBrand will incorrectly report an error when attempting to add your domain to the list of MyBrand domains associated with your account. A fix is in place for this issue and will be deployed shortly. This entry will be updated when the fix is live.
  
  UPDATE: This issue is resolved.
  
  
• 29-DEC 2008: FeedFlare links are not currently showing for feeds hosted on feedproxy.google.com. This is an issue the team is working on and hopes to have resolved as soon as possible.
  
  UPDATE: FeedFlare is finally back on and displaying for all feedproxy.google.com feeds as of late 30-DEC.
  
  
• 26-DEC 2008: The Your Feed and Feed XML views under the Optimize tab in feedburner.google.com do not currently display the feed source or content. This is a bug in these two views and is most likely not a problem with your feed content, as the error message on those pages incorrectly indicates. A fix is in process.
  
  UPDATE: This issue is resolved.
  
  
• 26-DEC 2008: Podcast downloads and feed item views and clicks for December 23, 2008 will not be available in www.feedburner.com accounts (accounts on feedburner.google.com are not affected). We apologize for this missing item stats data.
  
  
• 6-DEC 2008: We have seen many reports that Bloglines subscribers are not currently being tracked. We are making adjustments to restore Bloglines as a subscriber source and will update this issue once it's resolved. (Please note that any subscribers on Bloglines are still receiving your feed updates; they just aren't being reflected in your stats at this time.)
  
  UPDATE: Bloglines subscriber numbers should start to re-appear in your daily subscriber stats as of 12-DEC 2008.
  
  
• 4-DEC 2008: Have you recently moved your feeds to a Google account? Seeing a "404" error when trying to view your feeds, and you use our MyBrand service? Try the following workaround to fix the problem:
  
  1. Sign in to feedburner.google.com.
     
  2. Visit My Account > MyBrand.
     
  3. Click the remove link next to your current MyBrand domain(s), and then click Save.
  4. Re-enter the domain(s) you removed in the previous step and then click Save.
  5. Try to view the feed(s) that were showing 404 errors before. They should now display your content.
     
     
• 28-NOV 2008: Some feeds recently moved to feedburner.google.com from feedburner.com will display "502" error code message when requested; this error message almost always disappears within the first few requests, but sometimes it can persist for several hours. We are investigating a fix for this issue.
  
  
• 26-NOV 2008: FeedFlare links are currently turned off in feeds on feedproxy.google.com (and on sites, if you use the "Site" display option); we are moving to a new mechanism for hosting and displaying those links, but at this time the links will not render on either feeds or sites. No changes to your own feed settings are necessary; we will re-enable FeedFlare links as soon as we can.
  
  UPDATE: FeedFlare links are back on in feedproxy.google.com-hosted feeds as of 2-Dec.
  
  
• 6-NOV 2008: Our daily reach and subscriber statistics rollup is going slower than expected. We are making the appropriate adjustments/fixes, but you may see "0" for your various feed stats on 5-Nov until later today, GMT -0500, on www.feedburner.com. We appreciate your patience while we address the causes of this delay.
  
  
• 5-NOV 2008: If you use our Site Stats product on feedburner.com, you may notice that your numbers for today, 5-Nov, are much lower than usual. We had a reporting process fail that normally reports numbers during the overnight hours. This process has been restored and visitor stats are being recorded again, although the daily total will not be complete for 5-Nov. Starting with 6-Nov, you should see site statistics that are closer to your usual daily totals.
  
  
• 27-SEP 2008: If your feeds are now hosted on feedproxy.google.com (and no longer run on the original feeds.feedburner.com system), and you want to manually ping your feed to force FeedBurner to update your content, please visit http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/ping in your browser. If you visit http://ping.feedburner.google.com/ in a browser, you will see a "405" response, which is expected; this is the address blogging services and other systems use as a destination for POST requests only. (We plan to redirect requests by browsers for this address to http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/ping in the very near future.)
  
  
• 17-SEP 2008: Subscribers down a bit and stayed down since last week? They might be Rojo subscribers; the Rojo feed reader ceased operations on September 10, 2008. FeedBurner is no longer receiving requests (or counting traffic stats) from Rojo.
  
  
• 16-SEP 2008: We are updating our robots.txt instructions on feedproxy.google.com to match feeds.feedburner.com. These instructions read:
  
  User-agent: *
  Disallow: /~a/
  
  This should permit all readers/crawlers that previously retrieved feed content, but now get a blocked response, to start working properly again. Our apologies for any inconvenience you may have encountered!
  
  
• 31-AUG 2008 The online feed reader Rojo has suspended operations; FeedBurner has removed the "Add to Rojo" button from the list of available options for BrowserFriendly when burning new feeds, but you may want to visit your feed's own BrowserFriendly settings and click [Save] once to remove this button from your own feed's display in web browsers.
  
  
• 13-AUG 2008 Subscriber number totals and Item Use stats will be slow in appearing today for 12-AUG results, especially for recently burned feeds; our apologies for the inconvenience.
  
  
• 31-JUL 2008 We're looking into subscriber numbers at zero, which publishers have reported here and elsewhere. Do not adjust any feed settings or make any account changes.
  
  UPDATE: Subscriber numbers for feeds that were unexpectedly showing "0" should now display expected values for 31-Jul. We apologize for the delay and are working to minimize it in the future, but bear in mind that zero subscriber counts are still possible through some portion of each day.
  
  
• 22-JUL 2008 Due to a temporary system limitation, FeedFlare links may not appear in your feed. We are working on a fix and these links should reappear shortly. (No changes to any of your feed settings are necessary.)
  
  UPDATE: FeedFlare links should appear again in your feed at this time.
  
  
• 22-JUL 2008 We are investigating a general issue with Item Use stats — the statistics FeedBurner captures for individual feed content items, if you have those settings enabled. If you have noticed these stats fall off sharply over the past three days, you're not alone. We will post an update on Item Use stats status once we know more.
  
  UPDATE (23-JUL): Item Use stats are being progressively restored and should be back up-to-date in the next 24-36 hours.
  
  
• 12-JUL 2008 We are working with the Google Reader team to determine why some feed subscriber counts have remained static (unchanged) for multiple days. If "Google Feedfetcher" seems stuck on a particular number for your feed(s), just hang tight; we'll post an update here once we know more. No feed or account changes are necessary.
  
  UPDATE (23-JUL): "Google Feedfetcher" should start reporting fully updated (changed up? changed down? who knows; it's a surprise!) subscriber counts for feeds today. You may not actually see changes reported until 24-JUL or 25-JUL, however.
  
  
• 28-JUN 2008 From the it's-not-you-it's-us dept.: If you use our Site Stats for website traffic statistics, you may notice unusually low numbers for 28-Jun so far. We are restoring tracking services that have temporarily been suspended and expect to be reporting more recent site stats again shortly. Apologies for the temporary inconvenience!
  
  UPDATE: As many of you have noted, and much to our chagrin, the site stats reporting process didn't kick back on properly until mid-morning today, 30-Jun. Partial site stats numbers for today, 30-Jun, should appear in your normal stats. Starting with tomorrow, 1-Jul, you should see numbers much closer to your expected daily totals.
  
  
• 18-JUN 2008: Whoops! We forgot to reset the start time for subscriber reporting after yesterday's delay incident. So, once again, subscriber counts are a bit late in being reported back to y'all (but should be close to completely finished as of this writing, ~10a CST). Things should be back to normal starting with reporting of results on the 19th.
  
  
• 17-JUN 2008: Due to a Subscriber stats reporting may be delayed for some publishers; you may see "0" in your FeedCount chicklet and on your Analyze tab reports for feeds in your account until later this morning, CST.
  
  
• 4-JUN 2008: We have had multiple publishers report missing stats from My Yahoo!; 0 or 1 subscriber is typically what is being reported where larger numbers used to be reported. We are investigating our logs to determine whether this is a change in how Yahoo! reports subscribers, or in how we handle what they are already reporting to us.
  
  UPDATE: We have confirmed My Yahoo!'s fetcher is not currently reporting subscribers to FeedBurner. We are in touch with them about this issue and will post any news about a resolution here.
  
  UPDATE UPDATE: Good news! Yahoo has confirmed a fix and should have it deployed in the next few days; publishers with missing My Yahoo! subscriber numbers should see them restored soon. We'll post one final update once we're sure things are cool.
  
  FINAL UPDATE: As of 23-JUN, publishers should start seeing My Yahoo! stats appear in their FeedBurner subscriber tallies again.
  
  
• 30-MAY 2008: For some publishers, signing into feedburner.com might have been problematic during the early morning hours, CST. One of our application servers sorely needed a restart and did a pretty good job hiding this from us; the truant's been caught and returned to class. Sorry for any inconvenience!
  
  
• 14-MAY 2008: Our email delivery system did not poll some FeedBurner feeds for updates on 13-May; as a result emails were not delivered and email subscribers were not reported to FB subscriber totals for that date. We're investigating this issue.
  
  UPDATE 12:00 CST: We restarted the polling process; starting now, any feed changes not yet delivered via email should be detected and delivered, albeit up to three days late, and from this point forward on your regularly scheduled window. We regret this error!
  
  You may still see 0 email subscribers reported on your Analyze tab's Feed Stats view for Wednesday 5/14; this should be the last day with no reported email subscribers in this stretch. (Don't forget your subscribers didn't just up and disappear; they're still listed under Publicize > Email Subscriptions > Subscription Management.)
  
  
• 13-MAY 2008: Our stats rollup process is running a bit late today; you may not see feed item-specific stats until late morning Tuesday, CST (GMT -0500). Our apologies for this inconvenience. Subscriber and reach numbers should be mostly calculated and in place as usual, however.
  
  UPDATE 17:00 CST: We are still working on this issue and there may not be any item-level stats (itemviews and clickthroughs) listed for your feed(s) for the Monday May 12th full day for some time (but we do plan to restore this number). All other feed metrics should be in place and reported to you as always.
  
  
• 19-APR 2008: Publishers who want to activate the Email Subscriptions service using third party service FeedBlitz are seeing an error when attempting this activation. We have contacted FeedBlitz about this issue and are awaiting more information on a resolution. In the meantime, you may go to FeedBlitz.com directly to set up a feed-powered email subscription, using your FeedBurner feed, if you wish to use that service for email update delivery.
  
  UPDATE (24-APR 2008): FeedBlitz has resolved this issue, although you may see an error the first or second time you attempt to activate your feed with this service; just keep trying.
  
  
• 18-APR 2008: We have word from Six Apart that a number of users who use TypePad and FeedBurner together may have encountered trouble with display/use of their feed content, starting late evening, 17-Apr PST and resolved early afternoon today. If you use FeedBurner for email subscription delivery of your TypePad blog updates, monitoring for and delivery of new posts may have been affected during this outage period, but should be restored as of now. If you are still encountering trouble, you are encouraged to file a ticket with TypePad support as this is a TypePad-specific issue. We will continue to work with Six Apart to provide any additional updates.
  
  
• 8-APR 2008: If you use TypePad and FeedBurner and have seen your subscriber stats strangely see-saw between "normal" and "much too low," it is likely that your numbers will finally return to more consistent, "normal" levels due to a configuration change with Google Feedfetcher. We identified an issue today and hopefully by the time of April 9th rollups your numbers will be much closer to where they should be.
  
  
• 2-APR 2008: FeedBurner confirmed a trouble-free "Web Safety Rating" from McAfee SiteAdvisor.com. It is possible a previous "Slight Risk" rating affected FeedBurner-powered email delivery to users of McAfee Internet security software.
  
• 30-MAR 2008: We're seeing continued reports of inconsistent subscriber reporting from Netvibes. FeedBurner is reporting the numbers as-provided by Netvibes; we will verify our reporting routines, but at this time we don't know of a FeedBurner-based issue that may be causing this inconsistency.
  
  UPDATE (18-APR 2008): We are working with Netvibes to minimize the impact of this issue, but publishers whose subscribers are in the process of migrating from the 'Coriander' release of Netvibes to the new 'Ginger' version may not be reflected in your FeedBurner-computed statistics. We expect this discrepancy to disappear over time.
  
  
• 25-MAR 2008: Those of you who have seen surprising subscriber count drops with "Google Feedfetcher" (the feed reader "agent" that monitors feeds on behalf of iGoogle and Google Reader) should see more historically accurate totals reappear over the next several days. A fix to how Feedfetcher is reporting some subscribers was just put in place.
  
• 25-MAR 2008: Seeing "0" for your subscriber count right now? Don't panic! One of our stats rollup processes got a bit behind so your subscriber totals may not be tallied yet; it should wrap up soon and your numbers should be back when it's complete.
  
  UPDATE, 3PM CST: 0 counts that really shouldn't be 0 should now reflect the proper subscriber count number.
  
  
• 19-MAR 2008: Publishers have reported a drop in subscriber statistics with the most recently reported numbers, mostly related to FeedBurner email subscriptions, but also some reports of missing Netvibes and Google Feedfetcher (iGoogle/Reader) counts. This is due to a ~2 hour period of time on 18-MAR when subscriber stats were not recorded. Unfortunately this subscriber data will not be restored, but today's totals should return any unusually large missing totals to their former levels.
  
  UPDATE (20-MAR 2008): The email subscriber-specific numbers for 19-MAR appear to be back to expected levels for publishers originally affected by this issue. Email delivery should also continue. One other general recommendation we continue to make in the short term: choose a delivery window other than 7-9am CST (Central Standard Time).
  
  
• 01-DEC 2007: We have had to temporarily disable the personal FeedBulletin messages that tell you when we have issues retrieving your source feed. We hope to be able to turn this feature back on in the near future.
  
  Please note this action doesn't affect the "PodMedic" diagnostic report we provide for podcast feeds — that report is working as expected.
  
  
• GENERAL ISSUE: If you use a custom background image with Headline Animator, this background image, and any custom text placement changes you make with it, will not be reflected until our cache of your Animator expires. This is typically a 10-30 minute delay maximum.