Battle of the RSS readers: Bloglines versus Google Reader

 – posted October 2nd, 2006 by Laurence Veale     Comments (7)

Both Google Reader and Bloglines have recently made changes in attempt to win back users. As a daily user of Bloglines and someone who had previously given up on Google Reader, I decided to put them through their paces, comparing them on a number of features and awarding a point for a win or draw for each.

The results?

While Google Reader has a superior user interface, it is let down by not picking up new feeds consistently and not recognising the addition of some URLS.

Exporting and Importing RSS subscriptions via OPML

An excellent feature in most RSS readers is the ability to easily import and export all your subscriptions. This involves simply exporting your feeds in an XML format called OPML and then importing them in another reader. It makes it really easy to switch from one reader to another, particularly for comparison purposes.

In both Bloglines and Google Reader importing and exporting is a cinch so in this regard, it’s a draw.

Score: Bloglines 1, Google 1.

Update of RSS feeds

Screenshot of bloglines and google reader compared showing google with less updated feeds

I cleared all the latest feeds from both RSS readers and left them for 12 hours. The result? Google Reader had quite a few less new feeds than Bloglines. How can I trust that Google Reader is picking up my feeds? To be honest, I can’t.Bloglines takes the points.

Score lies at Bloglines 2, Google 1

Response time

Screenshot of Google's quirky loading image

In his otherwise great review on the Google Reader, Tom Raftery describes it as a fast interface. I disagree. There is sufficient lag between clicking on a category and the feeds appearing. So much, so that Google display a bubbling beaker in place of an egg timer. Cute but no cigar

Score: Bloglines 3, Google 1

Adding a new RSS feed

While adding a new feed looks initially much easier with Google, it fails to pick up some feeds that Bloglines does. The error message is potentially misleading, “No feed available for www.ireland.com” while Bloglines picks up a number of different feeds for the same site.

Screenshot showing how Bloglines picks up ireland.com, while Google does not

This is a similar problem to how regularly feeds are updated, I simply can’t trust the accuracy of Google at this stage

Score: Bloglines 4, Google 1

Additional functionality

Google has great functionality, and for me, seems far easier to use. Feeds can be starred (i.e. highlighted or flagged), shared, emailed with all options very close at hand.

Screenshot of some of Google Reader's features

In addition, Google Reader has a great variety of browser based widgets or bookmarklets. Bloglines offers bookmarklets too, but struggles with how to describe them.

Screenshot of Bloglines' confusing labelling

For example, both readers offer the facility to add a site instantly to your subscriptions from your browser. Google labels it “Subscribe as you surf” while Bloglines offers the potentially confusing “Easy Subscribe Bookmarklet” and a “Get a Subscribe To Bloglines Button”. What’s the difference? To the uninitiated, it’s not too clear and given that RSS penetration is so poor, users need all the help they can get. Infact, on their Reader blog, Google do just that in a short video overview of how it all works.

Also worth a mention is Google’s ability to tag feeds. Like Delicious and even this blog, the same item can live in multiple categories.Points go Google on this one but they still trail Bloglines.

Score: 4-2 in favour of Bloglines

Visual & Information Design

There’s no doubt about it, Google’s user interface is one of its key strengths. It’s clean, intuitive and tidy and is consistent with the likes of Gmail and Google Calendar. Points to Google on this one but they lose the battle of the RSS readers

Final Score: Bloglines 4, Google Reader 3

Key issues with Google Reader

I really want to use Google Reader but at the moment. I really love the interface but I just can’t trust the content it delivers. The key obstacles are:

  1. Feeds are not consistently updated
  2. New feeds are not always recognised
  3. It isn’t the quickest

That’s not to say that Bloglines has a superior offering, but I’ve come to trust the content it delivers and as you may have read elsewhere, content is still king. Having said that, these two readers are both free so you can easily sign up and make up your own mind.

Who else is talking about Google Reader?

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