Jan

25

Minor Google Reader Update: Now Shows Time of Publication

January 25, 2008 |

(Via Google Operating System) If you want your feeds still warm out of the server, you might have to look somewhere else than Google Reader. In its latest round of updates, Google made information about when an item was published and when it was actually added to Google Reader (they also updated the favicon):

Besides a new favicon and a confirmation dialog displayed when you mark all the posts as read, Google Reader now shows the published date of a post in a tooltip. Next to the snippet, Google Reader displays the date when the post was indexed by Google, not the date when it was published. Sometimes the difference between these two dates can be a single minute, but it could also be much bigger.

We knew there was a delay before this. Google has actually been quite open about it.

Looking at the feeds I subscribe to, as well as my own blogs, it seems like Google usually picks up new items from bigger blogs within half an hour. Looking at my own blog, most items even get picked up within a few minutes.

Blogs that update only a few times a week or might have a smaller number of readers, however, often see a delay of various hours. Overheard in PDX, for example, often has a three hour delay. Most of the smaller travel blogs I subscribe to also show similar delays.

If you are a blogger who want to react to news before others see it, you might want to use a desktop client.

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2 Comments so far

  1. Louis Gray on January 25, 2008 4:35 pm

    Sometimes, I’ll check Google Reader, FriendFeed and Spokeo to see who gets items from my blog first. So far, Spokeo has been the fastest, followed by FriendFeed, then Google Reader. The slowest so far? My Apple Mail (RSS). Even faster than all of them? MyBlogLog and a custom RSS-powered Mac Dashboard widget.

  2. Frederic on January 25, 2008 6:35 pm

    That’s some interesting info.

    I have always been partial to FeedDemon, but Google’s Shared Feeds are just too useful and I can’t make myself use two feedreaders at the same time, so I am sticking with Google Reader for now, even if it might be a bit slower.

    I’m surprised your Apple Mail client would be the slowest, though. Isn’t there a setting to change how often it polls the different feeds?

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