Finding Feeds

In her July 10, 2006 podcast, Helene B said there are better tools than simple Google search for finding feeds. For me, that is not true.

I do find Bloglines search easy to use and it gave useful results. I like Topix for news although its drop down pop ups can be annoyingly persistent. Technorati and Syndic8.com were overwhelming and Syndic8.com's graphic design was uninviting. I liked Syndic8's ten flags and quick links to country-specific stuff at first glance; however a brief exploration did not reveal anything riveting.

Google's simple web search is comfortable and useful for finding feeds. A straightforward search phrase "RSS feed ____ " [e.g. public library, library new DVDs, library blog, David Austin roses, etc.] got good results.

A Google simple web search for "blog about ____" also produced good results. Search term "blog ___" gives different but also good results. "blog about library" turned up good feeds in blogs including http://www.loc.gov/blog/ [Library of Congress blog]. "blog library new dvd" produced results including this sample I added to my bloglines: http://www.talkr.com/app/cast_pods.app?feed_id=26496.

Helpful for both beginner and intermediate searcher, Blogsearch.Google.com (beta) provides date/relevance sort and date published sort.