Hi, On a few sites that I have gone to, including Googe news I notice they offer RSS. What do they get out of this as when someone clicks the RSS link it goes straight to the news site and not Google news. I do notice that they use a redirect url in the RSS feeds though. For example, http://news.google.co.uk/news/url?s...04.htm&cid=1109105425&ei=YAL5RNjQJM3caNT85aoE Does using something like this mean that google will gain or PR or something. Is that why they do it. If they don't gain anything from it, then why do they offer it as it will just waste their bandwidth.
I'd say Google doesn't worry about bandwidth, and they do what they do - offer a lot of services for free and while you can't see any direct profits coming from this, I assure you they know where the money lies... Think of all the companies that give money to charities, buy equipment for hospitals etc. - where's the profit in that? While no one can see any direct profit from spending money like that they (the companies) know the general public will respect all that and at least see them in a better light which should (or almost certainly will) amount in increased profits later on... But I digress a little... So why do they offer RSS feeds in such a way? My guess would be a better user experience and a company like Google doesn't ignore this. But I don't think these redirects will give Google's pages any more PR - wouldn't that be against their own policy? (hm, can't remember what would you call this kind of redirecting)
Google is always like a better user experince. It's their goal to make users happy, so that's way it provides them with what they want. Absolutly normal.
I am now putting video on my site. This includes funny videos and will be adding Google ads by them. I am just wondering why Google doesn't have ads by them. Also, I will not be adding porn videos or illegal type videos where people die and get ridiculously hurt. I will have a few extreme videos, though. Do you think putting ads by these vidoes will be alright. I noticed alot of sites having google ads by videos so I was just wondering if it would be alright.
Google was only an example. I have seen much smaller sites doing RSS this way. I only gave google as an example, but now realise that google was the worst example I could have ever given as they are the ones that own the most searched search engine online.
I aggregate Google news feeds and display them on my kitchen design blog. (Look for 'Kitchen News' in sidebar) I have it as an extra service to my readers.