Google Classifies Any Site With an RSS Feed as a Blog?

A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion around how Google seems to consider any web site that contains an RSS feed, as a blog. In fact, several webmasters are complaining that their web sites are showing in the Google Universal Results, under the label of, "blog posts about," when their site is simply not a blog.

What seems to be happening is that Google may be considering any site that has an RSS feed as a blog. Many sites have RSS feeds these days, including Apple.com that has autodiscovery set up to their hot news headlines feed and even my site, RustyBrick.com that has our autodiscovery set up to our news section (which I really need to update).

It does appear that Google may classify www.rustybrick.com as a blog by listing our results in blog search, but it does not list apple.com in blog search. It does list many sites with RSS feeds, no matter if they are a blog or not, in blog search.

So does Google have a problem misclassifying blogs based on the RSS feed availability? Should webmasters be upset if their sites are included in Google Blog Search? Can it hurt?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

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posted rustybrick in Google Optimization at July 7, 2009 8:43 AM Comments (7)

Comments

Well unless being seen as a blog has a negative connotation, I wouldn't stress about being found as a blog - at least I'm being found.

I think Marilyn Manson said something to the effect of, "I read good reviews of myself and I'm happy, I read bad reviews of myself and I'm happy... I don't read anything about myself and I worry!"

Posted by Robert at July 7, 2009 09:08

Well, my problem is that my site HAS an rss feed but it's NOT getting picked up as a blog. Any suggestions as to how to up the ante?

Posted by Boris at July 7, 2009 13:35

You also have news site that have RSS news. E-Commerce sites that send their sales out with RSS feeds. RSS feeds are mainly used in blogs however they are in also so many other sites.

Posted by James Matthews at July 7, 2009 14:52

They've been interpreting just about all RSS feeds as blog feeds in Blogsearch for years. I raised the point a couple of years ago and the SEO community didn't even work up the energy to yawn.

Posted by Michael Martinez at July 7, 2009 15:23

I think it's the fact that the majority of sites these days that are run by an off the shelf CMS like wordpress or drupal, usually ping Google or a ping distribution service by default with every post. So of course Google thinks you are a blog when you are pinging their blog service. I bet Apple.com isn't in there because they don't ping anyone.

Posted by Jeremy Luebke at July 7, 2009 19:03

There is a school of thought which suggests you won't get penalised for blog comment spamming if you're a blog. Maybe it'd be quite handy for a static HTML site to incorporate an RSS feed, then, of whatever, inveigling Google to treat it as a blog, so it could then merrily attract keyword-laden comment links without penalty. Difficult not to think there'd be more to it than that though.

Posted by Bill Kruse at July 8, 2009 06:14

On the opposite side, I was just talking with a major news site that can't seem to get any of their blogs indexed in Google Blog Search, despite pinging via Wordpress and Feedburner's PingShot

Posted by Adam Sherk at July 8, 2009 11:05

Google Classifies Any Site With an RSS Feed as a Blog?

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