When Will RSS Get Some Love? Part II

Following up on the post earlier this week, Matt McGee reports that Google has added an RSS feature for Web searches. As noted, Google already offers RSS for news alerts. This extends it to Web searches, which can be set up on the Google Alerts page.

It’s unclear what the frequency of feed updates will be, given that Web results are much more static than news. Web results do indeed fluctuate but don’t follow the news cycle-like frequency that makes news and blogs so conducive to RSS. Google e-mail alerts allow users to choose whether to receive updates once a day or as they happen. But RSS is more real time by nature.

After a feed is generated, you can choose to add it to your existing RSS reader or view it in the Google Reader (see below). I set up a few feeds and will soon get answers to questions of frequency and general usability. In the meantime, back to the question of RSS usage; its new positioning within Google Alerts could give it more playing time with mainstream users. Along those lines, Google is careful to use the term “feed” rather than the less inviting “RSS.”