What is an RSS feed?

Many website operators use RSS to enhance their online offers with content from pro­fes­sion­al providers. But what about the feed tech­nol­o­gy? We look at the issue in the context of content syn­di­ca­tion and give you an overview of the functions and usage pos­si­bil­i­ties of RSS.

RSS is web feed tech­nol­o­gy that allows online content providers to publish new content on their website in a stan­dard­ized form. Web feeds can be found on news portals, blogs, forums, or wikis – es­sen­tial­ly any dynamic web offerings that are often subject to constant updates. The goal is to keep internet users informed of new content con­tin­u­ous­ly, as with a news ticker. The flow of in­for­ma­tion starts as a pull medium from the recipient, who sub­scribes to the web feeds that they’re in­ter­est­ed in. Feed reader software (usually an app or a web app) is used. Users subscribe to channels to au­to­mat­i­cal­ly receive content and up-to-date news from providers. The URLs for these feeds can be obtained from the web browser.

You can use RSS feeds for content syn­di­ca­tion methods, or for the multiple use of content. The RSS content of a website, once it’s struc­tured, can easily be in­te­grat­ed into other pages. Operators of online platforms sometimes use this option to sup­ple­ment their own page with foreign content, to give their homepage the character of a portal, or to establish them­selves as news ag­gre­ga­tors.

But the use of foreign web content for content syn­di­ca­tion is subject to copyright risks. In addition, syn­di­cat­ed content often provides duplicate content, which may lead to loss of search engine ranking.

RSS was developed in 1999 by Netscape Com­mu­ni­ca­tions. At that time, it was the ab­bre­vi­a­tion for RDF Site Summary, a tech­nol­o­gy used as part of the in­di­vid­u­al­ized messages that could be sent on the My Netscape network. One year later, the Resource De­scrip­tion Framework (RDF) was replaced by the simpler XML format, resulting in the rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of the ab­bre­vi­a­tion from RSS (Rich Site Summary) to then mean Really Simple Syn­di­ca­tion. The successor to RSS is the Atom format, which is based on RSS.

Currently, RSS rep­re­sents a col­lec­tion of XML file formats with which struc­tured web feeds are offered under specially designed URLs. The different RSS channels are often sub­di­vid­ed the­mat­i­cal­ly. For example, the New York Times provides separate feeds for different topics of news, such as business, arts, or real estate.

All RSS file formats have the fact that they are pure content elements in common. The tech­nol­o­gy uses the Ex­ten­si­ble Markup Language (XML) to mark in­for­ma­tion se­man­ti­cal­ly. In­for­ma­tion on the pre­sen­ta­tion of the content isn’t included in RSS documents. This allows web feeds based on RSS to be combined with a wide range of tech­nolo­gies, and present content over the internet across all types of media. Before pre­sen­ta­tion, though, RSS documents have to first be converted to HTML. The RSS parsers contained in feed readers are able to interpret the XML markup and process the in­for­ma­tion as an HTML document.

If you want to manage RSS feeds with Chrome, the browser needs to be upgraded with optional ex­ten­sions. Free add-ons can be found in the Chrome Web Store.

RSS documents feature a very man­age­able structure. The basic elements are the XML tags <rss>, <channel>, and <item>.

Every XML document starts with a tag that declares the cor­re­spon­dent XML version as well as the character set in use – in this example, XML 1.0 and UTF-8.

After the initial XML de­c­la­ra­tion comes the rss tag. This indicates the re­spec­tive RSS version and, in the current example, contains ref­er­ences to ad­di­tion­al spec­i­fi­ca­tions that can be included in the form of XML name­spaces. In the following example, the semantic char­ac­ters are Dublin Core (dc) and Atom (atom).

The actual content of the RSS document is nested in the channel tag. This contains the overall de­scrip­tion of the newsfeed (title, de­scrip­tion), included metadata (language, copyright, docs, generator, man­agin­gEd­i­tor, webMaster), logos, and links. 

The child elements used with the channel tag are divided into mandatory and optional elements.

The channel tag also contains the in­di­vid­ual item blocks that serve to display the article preview. Every item block rep­re­sents an article and, in the current example, contains the tags <title>, <link>, <de­scrip­tion>, <category>, <dc:creator>, <pubDate>, and <guid>.

Other than the category tag, each child element can only be used once per item.

In addition to the function that allows you to save an RSS feed as a dynamic bookmark, Firefox also offers the option of managing the sub­scrip­tion using an external ap­pli­ca­tion.

For website operators, RSS feeds are a good way to inform sub­scribers of new features at regular intervals and to encourage them to visit the website again. When it comes to online marketing, RSS feeds are discussed as a tool for customer loyalty.

To process the contents of a website as a feed, operators have three options available to them.

• Manual creation of an RSS document by means of XML

• File in­te­gra­tion through external programs and web services

• Automated output of RSS documents using a content man­age­ment system (CMS)    

In principle, RSS feeds can be created without too much effort. The un­der­ly­ing XML file is created in a classic text editor and the basic RSS schema discussed earlier serves as a template.

1. Create text files: In the first step, the RSS basic schema is filled with the contents of the re­spec­tive website. Generally, these RSS feeds contain anywhere from 10 to 15 items.

1. Save text files in XML format: The second step involves saving the just-created text document as a XML file.

2. Publish the RSS document: For website visitors to subscribe to the created feed, the un­der­ly­ing XML file is loaded onto the server and linked to from within the website.

A manually created RSS feed has the advantage that website operators can choose exactly which articles are to be syn­di­cat­ed via this medium. The drawback is that updates on the feed also have to happen manually. Bloggers and other website operators who want to regularly inform their readers about new content have to create a cor­re­spond­ing entry in the XML document for each new article on the website. To prevent the document from getting out of hand, it’s rec­om­mend­able that you delete the oldest entry as each new entry is added.

Due to the high workload required for updating RSS feeds, they’re rarely created manually in practice.

If you don’t want to write XML documents yourself, then you can rely on programs and web services that help web site operators create, publish, and maintain RSS feeds.

• RSS Builder: The freeware RSS Builder offers you the pos­si­bil­i­ty to insert RSS entries via a well-struc­tured user interface and get a XML document in return. In addition, the software provides an in­te­grat­ed FTP client so that the file can be uploaded using the tool as well. Pre­vi­ous­ly created XML documents can be opened and updated with RSS Builder, too. The dis­ad­van­tage: The program is only available for Windows 7, and requires the .NET framework 1.1. RSS Builder is, fur­ther­more, not currently being developed.

• Feedity Feed Builder: The web app Feedity Feed Builder provides functions for reading and au­to­mat­i­cal­ly struc­tur­ing dynamic websites. To au­to­mat­i­cal­ly create RSS feeds, users just need to have one web page of their project as an example. The semantic markup is done with the help of the visual selector in the frontend view. The auto-selection function au­to­mat­i­cal­ly transfers markups to similar items. RSS feeds created with Feedity are au­to­mat­i­cal­ly updated when new content is added. The dis­ad­van­tage: The tool can only be used ef­fec­tive­ly if all functions have been activated by sub­scrib­ing to a paid upgrade.

As a rule, dynamic websites are created with a CMS or blog software. These systems offer the benefit that all content is already se­man­ti­cal­ly struc­tured in the databases, ready to be separated from the pre­sen­ta­tion layer, and is generated dy­nam­i­cal­ly only at the moment of access. To publish an RSS feed instead of a website, you just need a different template that contains the ap­pro­pri­ate pre­sen­ta­tion spec­i­fi­ca­tions. RSS functions are included in all popular content man­age­ment systems. If the content on the website is revised, then the XML document will also be au­to­mat­i­cal­ly updated. Depending on the software you use, third-party software such as Google Feed­Burn­er can be helpful for expanding a CMS or blog software to include RSS func­tion­al­i­ties, as well as analytics and ad­ver­tis­ing.

7. Integrate the website source HTML code: To publish the RSS widget created via FeedWind, website operators need simply to paste the widget code into the HTML source of their website.

Instead of including external RSS feeds, FeedWind can also be used to provide an overview of a website’s own content on the home page.

In the past, RSS feeds were sometimes misused as a backlink source for search engine op­ti­miza­tion (SEO). For this, website operators would con­tribute the feeds of their own page to a variety of different RSS di­rec­to­ries. This approach is not rec­om­mend­ed anymore from today’s per­spec­tive, however. Similar to extra entries in web di­rec­to­ries, search engines can correctly recognize and identify this practice as a form of spam. Because of this, RSS feeds are no longer regarded as a tool for link building. The potential for a positive influence on SEO is there, however, due to the op­por­tu­ni­ty to generate traffic via feeds.

News ag­gre­ga­tors like Yahoo News, Google News, and Feedly play a central role: They are all based on RSS feeds. Website operators who are able to insert their own feed into these services can expect con­tin­u­ous traffic streams.

Caution is advised if you want to integrate almost ex­clu­sive­ly foreign content into your website via RSS. While it’s a great asset in mod­er­a­tion, it can be harmful to your search engine rankings if it’s too large. Google and other search engines sometimes classify the short de­scrip­tions contained in the feed as duplicate content. This applies in par­tic­u­lar to websites that provide little or none of their own content. You should always ask yourself whether or not the feed really rep­re­sents an en­rich­ment for your website’s visitors.