What is RSS anyway?

You may have seen the letters RSS on a web site recently, but what do they mean?

RSS or was originally started by Netscape as Rich Site Summary, but they decided to abandon the project. However, it had started to gain an interest with web developers who continued to develop it further. Netscape dropped RSS at version 0.91 and it was UserLand (a web authoring product supplier) who picked up the project and continue to work on it. When they came to release a new version a breakaway faction had already created RSS 1.0 (standing for RDF Site Summary) so they had to call the new version RSS 2.0, standing for Really Simple Syndication. So even though they sound the same RSS 1.0 and RSS 2.0 are entirely different products, although they carry out the same function. Since 2003 the RSS 2.0 specification is owned by the Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

RSS is an XML format that is used by websites to send news, updates and other content to users and other websites. An RSS file on a website is called a “feed” and has been adopted as a syndication tool by many media and news organisations like CNN, the BBC and the New York Times. Having a feed provides a mechanism for promoting websites without setting up costly advertising campaigns. Many blogs have RSS feeds to allow readers to be informed of new content on the site.

Although the use of RSS isn’t widespread yet the inclusion of the technology in Internet Explorer 7 should allow it to become more main stream. It is already a part of Firefox, Opera and Safari web browsers and has been included in the latest releases of Lotus Notes and Domino. Additionally, the fact that RSS is a lightweight file format makes it ideal for use on PDA’s, mobile phones and other handheld devices.

From a search engine optimisation point of view RSS is a very useful tool for promoting sites through feed aggregation tools so it is useful to have a feed on your sites, even if you have to edit it by hand. The syndication of content to other sites is a useful tool in getting your own site noticed by the search engines. Having other websites RSS feeds on your own site is a good and easy way of changing the content on your site regularly, which is viewed as a good thing by search engines.

Philip Norton BSc MSc
SEO Engineer

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