Meryl's Notes Blog

Pocket PC Thoughts (scroll down to find the article) rants about RSS feeds, a problem that’s been around a while. This honesty is an important factor in blogging success — something I’ve done — and I respect Pocket PC Thoughts for this.

Publishers prefer to use excerpts in feeds so that readers will come visit the site where there are ads and other content. Readers want the entire article in the feed so they don’t have to leave their feedreaders at all. My feeds have Google Ads every few entries. I put them at the end of the entry so they’re not obtrusive. It’s the best compromise, I think. Give full articles in exchange for a little ad here and there.

Isn’t an ad better than a tip jar? Since ads are supposed to match up the content, you might very well be interested in the site behind the advertisement — so you get more value from an ad than a tip jar — and the site gets a little change for your click.

What really annoys me is when I do a search and end up on a site full of ads that you can’t help but click the ad as they do a good job of hiding what little content there is. This comes across negative especially on sites that are just keyword-based sites and don’t have real content.

These keyword-based sites waste our time and their bandwidth. They think they can reel us in with false keyword search results and figure that we’ll stick around once we get there even if they don’t have what we’re looking for. As soon as I see the site is useless, I press CTRL+W. Obviously, many people don’t do the same because these sites continue popping up, which means they’re earning bucks.

What do you think of the RSS and ads issue? What’s reasonable?

P.S. Bionic Ear’s feed is messed up. It’s supposed to be showing full articles not excerpts in the feed. Working to get it fixed. Didn’t want you thinking I was all talk and no walk after reading this — should you happen to look at that feed.