Publishers asked for it, and the Google Reader team listened. Engineer Justin Haugh announced earlier today that the company’s crawler now “reports the number of Google users subscribed to the feed.”

“The count includes subscribers from Google Reader and the Google Personalized Homepage, and in the future may include other Google products that support feeds,” Haugh declared in the Official Google Reader Blog. He also compared “corralling the data” to “herding cats,” which brought to mind this old Super Bowl commercial.

It may be a bit longer before the roundup is complete (or, as Haugh put it, “for our stats to show up in [Feedburner’s] interface”), but a strongly positive public reaction has already occurred: most comments and articles on the subject include words such as “thanks” or phrases such as “very good.”

The update may, then, represent something of a recovery for Google, which has been going through a rough patch in recent days. Will it be enough, though? Google Reader is popular in some circles (such as the WebProNews newsroom), but it still lags far behind Bloglines and Rojo in terms of users.

Haugh certainly seems to be doing his best to win new followers. In his post, he helpfully referred to a Google Reader FAQ, the Google Reader for Publishers page, and Feedburner. Haugh then concluded his message with a “happy to help”-type signoff.

“We intend to develop more features for feed publishers,” the engineer wrote, “so let us know what would be most useful to you.”

Tags: Google Reader

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