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Tuesday, September 21, 2004

An RSS Hack for Sites That Don't Offer Feeds

I am getting most of my news via RSS these days so I really miss the handful of my favorite news sites that (as of now) do not publish feeds. Here's a workaround I developed using Google News and Voidstar's fantastic Gnews2RSS hack. I have included a screenshot for each step.

1) Using Google News' advanced search page, build a search for the keyword "+a" within the news source you want to build a feed. For example, to create a feed for MediaPost.com I entered "+a" in the keyword field and "Mediapost.com" in the source box. This advanced search query generated the following this page of results. Check to make sure it's accurate or close before proceeding to step 2.

Googlenewsrss1_2


2) On the search results page, copy what's in the search results box at the top. In this example it's "+a source:mediapost_com"

Googlerss

3) Head over to Gnews2RSS enter your search term and you'll get your feed. For example, here's an RSS feed I created for MediaPost, a popular marketing news site.

Googlenewsrss3_1

Please note that this workaround isn't perfect. Occasionally you need to just search for the name of the news source as a straight Google News search without entering "+a" in the advanced search page. Case in point, this search for articles from iMediaConnection. (Here's the iMedia Connection feed if you want it.) Still, for now this is a good hack until more sites begin offering RSS feeds.

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Listed below are links to weblogs that reference An RSS Hack for Sites That Don't Offer Feeds:

» Roll your own news in RSS from Cutting Through...
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» Google News Feed Generator from RSS in Government
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» Google News Feed Generator from RSS in Government
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