Google Finally Drops RSS Feeds From Google Search Results

Dec 19, 2007 • 7:43 am | comments (4) by | Filed Under Google Search Engine Optimization
 

We asked the question a while back, Should Google Display RSS Feeds in Web Search Results and we determined, no. Then GoogleGuy confirmed Google does not want to display most RSS feeds in the Google index.

The Google Webmaster Central blog announced Google has taken the RSS feeds out of their index. But first credits for finding this news goes to Sebastian, who spotted via a German Google Webmaster Central blog post.

To address these concerns, we prevent feeds from being returned in Google's search results, with the exception of podcasts (feeds with multimedia enclosures). We continue to allow podcasts, because we noticed a significant number of them are standalone documents (i.e. no HTML page has the same content) or they have more complete item descriptions than the associated HTML page. However, if, as a webmaster, you'd like your podcasts to be excluded from Google's search results (e.g. if you have a vlog, its feed is probably a podcast), you can use Yahoo's spec for noindex feeds. If you use FeedBurner, making your podcast noindex is as simple as checking a box ("Noindex" under the "Publicize" tab).

See, we are clear of feeds.feedburner.com in Google, for now, at least.

Good news, in my opinion.

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld & Sphinn.

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