4 Simple Ways To Find RSS Feeds With Google Reader

Google RSS Reader

RSS feeds saves so much time if you’re always researching online and trying to get the latest news in your niche. For those who don’t know what a rss feed is, in simple terms, its basically a stripped down version of a site where you can just read the content in line-item form. A RSS feed reader is a tool for you to hold many feeds from different sites on one page for easy managing and reading.

If you already use a rss reader, I highly suggest you check out Google Reader if you haven’t tried it yet. Many of you already log into Google Reader every single day without realizing it, because this reader is a web-based feed aggregator that you can access once you’re logged into your Gmail account.

Whoever doesn’t have Gmail needs to get with the times and create an account today. Gmail addresses are like social security numbers now a days, it’s impossible for someone not to have one.

Once you’re logged into your Gmail account, click on the top left navigation link called “Reader”. From there you can click on the “Add a subscription”

4 Ways to Search for RSS Feeds in Google Reader

What I really like about the Google Reader are the ways they allow you to add subscriptions (feeds). Here are the 4 ways you can find rss feeds for your Google Reader:

Feed URL: This is the most common way of adding a feed into and rss reader. The problem is that you’ll have to find the blog or site and click on the rss icon to subscribe. This is great if you already know who to follow, but troublesome if you forget the site name.
Site Name: You can also enter the blog name without the .com and it should pull the feeds for that way. For Example, if you enter blog’s name, Jack Nguyen, you’ll see my blog’s rss feed come up.
Keyword: Type in a keyword on a rss topic that interests you. This search function will pull a list of feeds from blogs and websites with that certain keyword you typed in the rss feed title.Let’s say you wanted to find rss feeds on blogging but you’re not interested in Wordpress. Here’s the search function you should use:
“blogging -wordpress”. This command will pull subscription feeds about blogging but nothing about Wordpress in the Title.
Webmaster’s Name: Entering a popular name in the blogosphere will pull that person’s feed. Let’s say you want to pull Darren Rowse’s feeds but you don’t know his feed url. Just enter his name and subscribe his Problogger site feed.

More Cool Features

There are many cool features that you can do with Google Reader, here are some of them:

Shared Items: You can share and allow your friends to view your feeds. This is great to discover great feeds to subscribe to.
# of Subscribers: The Google Reader conveniently tells you how many subscribers that feed has so you can decide the quality of the feed you’re adding to your reader.
Recommendations: From your feed selection, Google will recommend a few feeds for you to subscribe based on your topic of interest.
Mobile: If you have an iPhone or some other mobile device, you can view the reader by entering the following url in you mobile browser: google.com/reader/i