What is the current state of play on this? I am thinking of using RSS newsfeeds as content pages for my websites. My intention is to use several feeds at once and then have them in a random order. They will be static html pages so will be spiderable. Some questions concerning this: 1. Does Googles algo pick this up and penalise sites that do this? i.e. can they see that you are using feeds and therefore they apply some penalty? 2. Duplicate content - when Google looks at a page, do they look at a paragraph and see if it matches another site or do they only look at a page in its entirety? I have often wondered if you could have a randomised list of feeds but then if Google looks at one paragraph and finds it is a duplicate of another feeds paragraph, then it will give it a red flag. 3. Is it best to create a little bit of unique content for each page and then slap a randomised feed on the end of it, so that it can help avoid duplicate content detection? These may seem like basic questions to many of you here but I have yet to create a site using newsfeeds as a large part of the content. Before I start I would like to get a feel for what is allowed and what isn't. Also, I have a concern about the legality of using someone elses feed on my site as content. Or do they all allow this? Any advice is appreciated. Jon
Good questions Jon. RSS feeds are a great way to keep content fresh and constantly updating on your site pages. Many sites which offer a feed 'want' it to be displayed on as many other sites as possible, but others with feeds choose not to display it for syndication. There are many ways to go about building a site using feeds. A lot of site owners have a section of their site dedicated to news or headlines from their industry or profession. Certain WP blog mods allow this to be accomplished easily and there are CMS's that will also cater to these needs. It sounds to me like you want to add feeds to all your pages? If that is the case, then you asked very good questions regarding dup content and Google algo. I am not aware of any penalty for using RSS feeds as 'part' of the content on your site. Sites that are made up completely from feeds with NO unique content may encounter lower ranking than the original news source for keywords. Most RSS feeds only offer a snippet of text from the main article body, so you would not be displaying the full article anyway (some do have the full content, ads, images and video written into them). A random list of feeds from several sources should keep you safe from any penalty, unless the site is built solely for Adsense or has NO unique content or information to offer. Know one really knows what Google calculates when they look at a page, but a snippet from a news story should be no different than all the articles that have been distributed and displayed on multiple sites, or bloggers who post about major news stories or other blog posts and quote them in their own blogs. You 'should' link to the source site as a gesture to the original author and news source, and so people can read the whole article if they want. It is best to have all unique content per page and no 're-produced' content, but that would defeat the point of RSS and keeping your site fresh, so you are right in thinking about adding in as much unique content per page as possible while still keeping the page size small and quick loading. To give you an example check out: Search Engine Feeds It is made entirely of RSS feeds and unique content from respective authority sites who report on search engines, seo, Online marketing, linking, ppc, webmaster news and more. The site has been live since March 1st and already ranks in Google. Hope this helps give you an idea or two about YOUR site! Oh yeah, be sure to let us see the results when you have it complete!
How much of a benefit is it to feature an RSS newsfeed on the mainpage of my website? Will Google think my site has fresh content? or should I create a new section devoted to industry news? Any ideas?
Google would frown on any attempt like this to try and trick it's algorithm into thinking that your site is updated with unique content more often than it is.
Right, but some sites do this to give their visitors some news headlines to read. Does Google frown upon that?
I do use newsfeeds on my sites sparingly. I create news pages specifically to display the news information relevant to my sites visitors. The pages make up a small portion of the total pages for the site. These pages are linked from my mainpage so that they will be indexed.
I used news feed too. Well, msnbot and yahoo bot come more often, google about the same, but now I am concern about copyright and will remove soon. I have read the term of use from the site that offer news feed and they said for personal use only. Is this anyone concern about or have any problem about with Adsense also?
Neeper - If you are thinking about adding content feeds to your site it is a good idea. I would create a specific section of the site where your news is displayed and then also include the last 5 or so articles from that section on the homepage. Yes, Google will think your site is more sticky with the updated feeds and content changes on the homepage and news pages. The new pages will be indexed providing you do not read and syndicate the feeds using frames or JavaScript. Using php or php to html would be the best way IMO. ASP will work too if the site is already built in .Net. Google will not frown upon you using feeds as long as it is not the only content being offered on the site. You should not worry about copyright issues as long as your feeds link back to the source article or news headline. Google does have a program called Adsense for Feeds that has been in Beta for a long time and doesnt look like it is coming out anytime soon. My guess is you are OK with them (have not seen anything in the TOS about it). BTW, I found this article and thread by using Search Engine Feeds
I have a site where I am building destination profiles and was thinking of adding a news feed (say BBC) to add local news to each destination. Is that a good idea? I know so little about RSS Feeds that I don't really know what I'll be getting into.
FWIW, I have both news feeds and AdSense on several of my sites, and have never had any problems. Sam