I decided to grab the stats for inkBlots this month and see who was coming by for a visit. Since this blog is primarily about syndicated feeds, it follows that you, the gentle reader, are more likely than not getting this through a feed reader.

I was looking for proof, so here is the pudding: Half of the hits to inkBlots are done with syndication readers and other agents, the other half with a standard web browser. (Many of the latter may be click-throughs from the former, but I don’t have a good way of determining that.)

Other (RSS Readers, bots, etc.) : 49.8 %
Firefox: 21.5 %
MS Internet Explorer: 20.8 %
Safari: 2.6 %
Mozilla: 2.3 %
Netscape: 1.1 %
Opera: 0.7 %
Konqueror: 0.3 %
NetNewsWire: 0.2 %
OmniWeb: 0.1 %
Others: 0.1 %

What I found fascinating was the variety of RSS readers (or crawlers) used to get content from inkBlots. Here is an alphabetized list of all of the user-agent identifiers that have requested content from this site. (Some contain personal email addresses; these have been edited to protect their privacy.) The breadth of this list hints at how robust — and competitive — the syndicated reader market is:

Aggrevator/0.8.0
AppleSyndication/38
axfeedsbot/0.1_(_http://axfeeds.com/)
BlogBot/1.2
Bloglines/2.0
BlogSearch/1.1__http://www.icerocket.com/
Blogslive_(info@blogslive.com)
BlogsNowBot,_V_2.01_(_http://www.blogsnow.com/)
Chilkat/1.0.0_(_http://www.chilkatsoft.com/ChilkatHttpUA.asp)
FeedDemon/1.11_(http://www.bradsoft.com/;_Microsoft_Windows_2000)
FeedDemon/1.5_(Feedburner;_http://www.bradsoft.com/;_Microsoft_Windows_XP)
FeedDemon/1.5_(http://www.bradsoft.com/;_Microsoft_Windows_XP)
JPluck/2.1.6b_(Java_1.4.2_05;_Linux)
kb.juice.RssEngine
larbin_2.6.3_larbin2.6.3@unspecified.mail
larbin_2.6.3_n.sugandh@[deleted for privacy]
larbin_2.6.3_sneha@[deleted for privacy]
larbin_2.6.3_wgao@[deleted for privacy]
larbin_test_nobody@airmail.etn
Liferea/0.9.3_(Linux;_http://liferea.sf.net/)
Lonopono/1.0_(Lonopono;_http://www.lonopono.com;_sales@lonopono.com)
MagpieRSS/0.7_(_http://magpierss.sf.net)
NewsGatorOnline/2.0_(http://www.newsgator.com)
NG/2.0
Onfolio/2.0
Pluck_Soap_Client/1.0
PubSub-RSS-Reader/1.1_(http://www.pubsub.com/)
Rome_Client_(http://rome.dev.java.net/)_Ver:_0.5
rss-bot/1.0_(http://www.rss-bot.com)
rssImagesBot/0.1_(_http://herbert.groot.jebbink.nl/?app=rssImages)
RSSOwl/0.9b
RSSOwl/1.1.1_2005-04-11_(Windows;_U;_en)
RSSOwl/1.1_2005-03-24_(Windows;_U;_en)
SharpReader/0.9.5.1_(.NET_CLR_1.1.4322.2032;_WinNT_5.1.2600.0)
sna-0.0.1_mikeelliott@[deleted for privacy]
sohu-search
Syndic8/1.0_(http://www.syndic8.com/)
Technoratibot/0.7
topicblogs/0.9_(http://www.topicblogs.com/)
Tristana_1.0
Twisted_PageGetter
UniversalFeedParser/3.3__http://feedparser.org/
UofTDB_experiment_leehyun@[deleted for privacy]
YouReadMe_Feedeater_1.0

Lastly, here are the bots, spiders, and miscellaneous agents hitting the site:

A2B_Location-Based_Search_Engine_(_http://www.a2b.cc)
aipbot/1.0_(aipbot;_http://www.aipbot.com;_aipbot@aipbot.com)
Argus/1.1_(Nutch;_http://www.simpy.com/bot.html;_feedback_at_simpy_dot_com)
Blaiz-Bee/1.0_(_http://www.blaiz.net)
ccubee/3.0
Combine/2.0
DiamondBot
Downes/Referrers
Gigabot/2.0
Jakarta_Commons-HttpClient/2.0.1
Jakarta_Commons-HttpClient/2.0.2
Jakarta_Commons-HttpClient/3.0-rc1
Java/1.4.1_01a
Java/1.4.2_03
Java/1.4.2_04
Java/1.4.2_07
Java/1.4.2_08
Java/1.5.0_01
Java/1.5.0_02
Java/1.5.0_03
Java1.4.0
Microsoft_Internet_Explorer
Microsoft_URL_Control_-_6.00.8862
Minuteman/0.4
MojeekBot/0.2_(archi;_http://www.mojeek.com/bot.html)
MovableType/3.15
NutchCVS/0.06-dev_(Nutch;_http://www.nutch.org/docs/en/bot.html;_nutch-agent@lists.sourceforge.net)
OmniExplorer_Bot/2.73_(_http://www.omni-explorer.com)_WorldIndexer
Perl-Win32::Internet/0.082
ping.blo.gs/2.0
polybot_1.0_(http://cis.poly.edu/polybot/)
psbot/0.1_(_http://www.picsearch.com/bot.html)
Python-urllib/1.15
ReqwirelessWeb/3.5_Palm_OS
RPT-HTTPClient/0.3-3
RPT-HTTPClient/0.3-3E
Shockwave_Flash
Space_Bison/0.02_[fu]_(Win67;_X;_SK)
Waypath_Scout&v4.0_(alpha)_-_info_at_waypath_dot_com

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 20th, 2005 at 12:53 and is filed under syndication. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.