For those of you who use FeedBurner for your blog you will be glad to know that some new features have been added to the service. Along with a new look and layout there have also been some very helpful features added in the Standard Stats (free) version of FeedBurner…

I especially like the ‘Uncommon Uses’ features which will allow me to find out who is using the content from my site and how they are using it or if my content is on a spam blog or has been reproduced without giving me any credit. From the Standard FeedBurner control panel I can easily visit the offending site, check it out, and contact or report them if necessary.

• Uncommon Uses: This is a new concept we’re introducing that really begins to leverage the critical mass of feed readers, bots, search engines, news filters, and other common feed sources that we observe. Uncommon Uses identifies and highlights places where your feed content is referenced or clicked that FeedBurner does not recognize as a common feed service. Uncommon uses includes contact with your feed by non-subscribers.
• Podcasts: We’ve (finally) added the ability to track the number of downloads of rich media enclosures within a feed, including audio and video, in addition to the number of subscriptions.

Here is a screenshot from my FeedBurner ‘Uncommon Uses’ screen. Although no one at this time seems to be publishing my content on their website.

FeedBurner has also made some upgrades to their premium service as well. These include item popularity and active reach (how many people are actually reading your feed).

If you have a blog and haven’t checked out FeedBurner I highly recommend you give it a try, you can’t go wrong with their free version and it’s very simple to set up.

New to RSS and don’t have any idea what any of this means? Learn more about it here.