Google indexed RSS feeds appearing in standard search results
Published by on December 12th, 2005
In recent weeks I’ve noticed an increase in the number of RSS feeds appearing as results in standard Google searches.
This is a pain. There is often no indication that the search result you are clicking on is indeed an RSS feed and not a proper web page. This results - on my setup and I suspect others - in Safari throwing the feed URL at my chosen RSS reader and it in turn asking me to confirm subscription to the feed. Irritating.
This is perhaps following the release of Google Base (read about it here)last month, though the ability to categorise the type of content you are submitting via Google Base should at least result in some intelligence on Google’s part to present the search results correctly, should they not be a standard web page. They handle PDFs just fine, so why not add a similar ‘View this page as HTML” option for RSS feeds?
Why is this RSS search result a problem?
Earlier today I noticed a bunch of search term hits to this blog related to my recent post about TinyMCE and Firefox 1.5 issues (go there), that’s great, I thought. Interested in seeing where it ranks, I searched on Google and found that the results returned was my RSS feed. I wonder just how many non-RSS-savvy users would be put off by the return of something other than a standard web page…
Technorati Tags: RSS, Google Base
