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Who Are Your Anonymous Followers?

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Occasionally, we see queries from bloggers who are unsure what anonymous Followers are.
How do I know when someone Follows my blog anonymously?
and
How do I block anonymous Followers?


When someone Follows a blog publicly, he / she gets two things:
  • A subscription to the blog newsfeed, in the Following Reading List, and / or in Google Reader.
  • An entry in the Following community for the blog.


When someone Follows a blog anonymously, she / he gets one thing:
  • A subscription to the blog newsfeed, in the Following Reading List, and / or in Google Reader.


If you Block someone from Following your blog, you remove their entry from your Following community. Newsfeed subscriptions, though, are universally open - if a feed is available to anybody, it's available to everybody. Your anonymous Followers, as well as your Blocked Followers, can read your newsfeed - just as any reader who wishes to subscribe, without using Following.

If the blog feed is routed through FeedBurner, anybody subscribing to the feed can be counted. If you have a visitor meter installed on the blog, anybody viewing the blog using a link from the blog feed (called "reach" in FeedBurner statistics) will be logged through the visitor meter. Short of FeedBurner or a visitor meter, you won't know anything about anonymous Followers, or about Blocked Followers.

A Blocked Follower appears in your Following community (in the "Blocked" list in your dashboard). An anonymous Follower is simply anonymous, and appears nowhere.

And, just as you can't track an anonymous Follower, you can't Block an anonymous Follower.

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Comments

pepe said…
I want to delete the entire process of "follower" from my blog. Is there anything in the rules that forbids the owner of the blog from running it his way? I don't think so. Several months ago I had to delete three blogs because they were infested with followers. I tried and there was no help. Routine suggestions but nothing works. Someone from the "Followers" department (sounded like) wrote that I should be grateful. Any follower that really reads my blogs would know that I do not need followers. What I need is readers and those are coming right along just fine.
30/11/09 18:20
Nitecruzr said…
Specter,

That's easy.
1. Remove the Followers gadget.
2. Deactivate the blog feed.

Everybody will have to view the blog online, or go elsewhere. Done.

Of course, nobody will surf there either.
30/11/09 19:19
pepe said…
I do not have a Followers gadget. And I do not want followers. Readers yes, I want those desperately and I am getting them. It is followers that are goofing up the works. I am about to delete another blog because I cannot block the follower and I cannot even find out who is goofing up the works. And my other blogs are so nice a pretty without that followers flag.
14/12/09 01:54
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