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Added on 08/30/07 by
Kris |
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Scott appears to be correct.
He sent me an email yesterday to say that he and Pete had a conversation about something. Which evidently happens on occasion. From the email and attached screen shot I deduced that the discussion was about Google indexing RSS feeds and linking directly to them and how that sucks. 'Cause it does.
Don't get me wrong I love Google for indexing feeds. Seriously, it rocks. They are leading in this area.
Let me show you what's going on:
1. Scott searches at Google for an awesome party in Chicago called "The Deaf Chicago Party" (remind me to ask him about this) and the first result is Croncast.
The first thing to pay attention to in this image to pay attention to is the green URL - http://www.croncast.com/keyrss/Chicago party.rss. Yep, it's a RSS feed and not a web page. To which I say, "right on." However, 99.9 times out of 100 when when someone clicks through and RSS link in Google they get a face full of XML or an ugly feed. Click the link above to see.
2. Scott clicked on my link to the RSS from Google and and something magical happened. See the screen shot that he sent me:
He ended up at my site not looking at a bunch of XML or having his browser ask him if he wants to subscribe to my feed. He was taken directly to a page within my site that has relevant posts from our podcast and blog for the topic he was looking for . . . maybe, probably not really since I don't know what 'The Deaf Chicago Party' is. And, apparently, Google doesn't either. Let's just call it serendipity.
The summary to my detective work can be boiled down to what I figured out a few months ago:
1. Google loves RSS feeds filled with new stuff
2. I love RSS feeds filled with my new and old stuff
3. People like information on topics of interest
4. I created RSS feeds by post tag but also allow them to be created by readers/listeners dynamically (see #3)
5. I did some quick SEO on these feeds to make their titles and descriptions relevant to topic
6. Finally, I coded the feeds to check if user was coming from Google or other search engines
7. Google sends bot and indexes said feeds
8. Someone searches at Google for a topic like "tijuana vasectomy" - just got a hit for it yesterday
9. That someone clicks the link and ends up at site with the exact same items in it that were in the RSS feed without all the feed related hassle
It's not a perfect system but one that I think is way more acceptable to a user than clicking a link in a search engine and getting put into a feed. In many cases being dumped into a feed isn't going to get you to the content you wanted anyway because it has been pushed out by newer items. When I put someone into my site from a feed result in a search engine they then have the ability to find their topic right there. If not, they an internal site search that will find what they are after. The coolest part to me about it is that once they have made it to the site I then offer them the feed for their topic, just in case this is truly what they were after.
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