I had RSS feeds that were on my websites that were from other sites and converted to html. I originally placed them on my sites to get regularly refreshed new content as the feeds were related to supplement my new content. I'm trying an experiment to validate what webmasters here are saying about RSS feeds from other sites hurting SERPs due to duplicate content. I have removed them today and will see what the results are in 2 weeks. I will continue adding fresh new content as usual, continue my own RSS feed and continue with article submission and link building. If I notice any dramatic drop in SERP, I will reinstate the feeds very quickly (before the 2 weeks). However, if the SERP remains stable or increases, I will post the results here and of course leave the feeds off. Anyone have any comments as to any other thing I may wish to do to validate this let me know by posting here.
From my personal experience, when my sites were 1st put up, yes it did take some months before a significant change in SERP appeared after some factors had changed. I think the sandbox effect was in place. Although I can't say for sure since I didn't use OFAT (one factor at a time) or DOE (design of experiments) techniques for experimentation, it seems that new links from related authority sites or higher PR sites, fresh content and article links as well as other factors have an impact relatively quickly (a couple of weeks). I would like to see some real experiments as to the effects on SERP and the amount of time it takes to effect the SERPs when factors that influence SERP are changed. Anyone have some data/experiments that they have tried as to the time it takes to effect SERP from changes in the factors I mentioned. I would also "guess" that the site's age has some role in how quickly the SERPs get effected as well as how relevant any backlinks are to the site. It also depends on how much competition you have in your niche. I'm no expert and only stating my experience.
Day #7 of experiment: At the start of the experiment, I was around 13-14 in Google. Today, I'm at 10-11 (depending on datacenter). Since I am still link building and content building, I can't be sure if the positive effect is from removing this RSS snippet from my homepage or simply the other factors. The rate of changing the other factors is approxiamately the same (links/content) however I'm not sure if I received any good backlinks from some good PR site that maybe causing the increase. At least I didn't see a dramatic drop in SERP due to it's removal, so I'll keep going without it for now. Update in a week or so, unless dramatic change happens, then I will update sooner.
OK, it's been 14 days and I'm at #7 in Google. It maybe some of the backlinks effecting my site, but it sure has risen much more quickly recently. The dupe content in the feed snippet seems to have had an effect so I will leave it off. Also ranking at #5 in MSN and 14 in Yahoo. So until the next Google dance, I'm happy. Thanks everyone who gave me the advice about the dupe content in RSS feeds.