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January 14th, 2007

Google Reader doesn’t Refresh When You Tell it to

I’ve been noticing for a while that Google Reader is very delayed in showing me updates to feeds. I always figured it was my fault somehow, perhaps the specific feeds I was subscribed to?

But this thread and many others like it has everyone complaining of this problem. The best I can discern is that Google Readers refreshes feeds only on its own schedule (possibly as little as once every three hours!) and hitting the refresh button above the feed does nothing.

It was pointed out that this could be a bandwidth issue as in a lot of webmasters would get unhappy if (millions?) of Google Reader users were always hitting refresh and actually having Google re-access the feed. But I don’t want to hear excuses, I want an RSS reader that works! Timely updates are the killer app of RSS readers, get it fixed!

Can anyone reccomend a better web based RSS reader?

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Posted by Greg Pinero (Primary Searcher) in Other, Web Services

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 14th, 2007 at 3:21 pm and is filed under Other, Web Services. You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

4 Responses to “Google Reader doesn’t Refresh When You Tell it to”

  1. Jody says:

    You sure the feeds are being updated? Are you subscribed to the same feeds in more than one reader? I’ve noticed the same thing, but assumed the RSS feeds weren’t updated as fast as the live site - I never compared it to another feed.

    January 14th, 2007 at 9:48 pm
  2. Greg Pinero (Primary Searcher) says:

    The feed was definately updated. Granted, the feed in question does seem a bit buggy since the RSS version wouldn’t show up in Google Reader so I had to use the atom version.

    And in it’s defense I made a post to Blended Technologies earlier today and Google Reader picked it up within 20 minutes. Perhaps they’re having resource issues?

    January 15th, 2007 at 3:11 am
  3. kimberly says:

    how old is lady sov

    January 24th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
  4. Peter says:

    i use itsmynews, and i really like it. its very user friendly and i never have any problem with it updating the feeds. Anyways check it out and see for yourself, http://www.itsmynews.com.

    June 7th, 2007 at 2:44 pm