RSS and Yahoo!

XML RSS My Yahoo! SERPS

[Dave_Brain]

Hi

My site is listed in Yahoo! and although I got its RSS listed in the beta directory, it doesn't show up under my SERP entry. Is there some way to make sure Yahoo lists the RSS with results for my site?

<snip>

[edited by: werty at 3:23 pm (utc) on Sep. 21, 2004]
[edit reason] Terms Of Service #13 [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[ebiz97381]

gee guys......thanks for the wonderful answer....hehe

[edited by: Woz at 6:39 am (utc) on Sep. 28, 2004]
[edit reason] No URLs please, see TOS#13 [/edit]

[gethan]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld - Dave_Brain and ebiz97381

Yahoo Publishers FAQ [my.yahoo.com] - will probably answer all your questions.

Ps. The Tos's are there for good reasons - because of them and the mod's hard work this is the most professional and useful forum that I know of. Bar my own of course at www.<snip> ;)

[Dave_Brain]

Thanks for the pointer, but I had already looked there. I've got my RSS listed in the directory but what I am not seeing is the "View as XML" link in the Yahoo main SERPs page for my site...any other clues?

DB

[gethan]

You've added it to your Yahoo! I guess. I'm in the same position as you at the moment - when did you add this - there will definetly be a delay.

[Dave_Brain]

I added it, middle of August...that and several others that are also yet to show up as "View as XML"

Something I did spot in Mozilla Firefox (now that I've finally abandoned MSIE) is that if you've set your RSS headers up properly an RSS button shows up in the status bar, which is nice.

DB

[Tim]

Is the URL in the RSS directory exactly the same as the one you are seeing in the serps? If not you can change the URL in your RSS feed to match. Obviously there are other considerations about changing the URL but I think this should work if it is ony Yahoo you are worried about.
Tim

[rmjvol]

Hi Tim,

I've got a site with 1 feed for each the 4 top level categories. One of the 4 categories shows in the SERPs with the:
RSS: View as XML - Add to My Yahoo! [Beta]
The other 3 categories do not. It's been that way for several months. The url format and the format of the pages are identical.

The only thing I can think of is that I added the 1 category's feed in My.Yahoo as an RSS. I guess I'll try adding the other feeds & see if you pick them up.

Does that sound like it may be the issue or is there any other reason why you guys would pick up the 1 category but not the others?

When you asked if the url is the same, does that mean these would both work:
domain.com/foo/index.php & domain.com/foo/index.xml
domain.com/whats_new.php & domain.com/whats_new.xml

Thanks

[gethan]

I don't know if this has caused the problem (the feed displayed correctly in my Yahoo) - but I double checked my feed with [feedvalidator.org...] and had a few errors. Now corrected - 3 days ago.

> Is the URL in the RSS directory exactly the same as the one you are seeing in the serps? If not you can change the URL in your RSS feed to match.

Tim: Erm - not exactly sure what you mean - here's the header from my rss (examplified)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<rss version="2.0"
 xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#">
    <channel>
          <title>Example Title</title>
          <link>http://www.example.org/</link>
          <description>Example Description</description>
          <language>en-us</language>
          <pubDate>Mon, 18 Oct 2004 05:06:15 CDT</pubDate>
          <lastBuildDate>Mon, 18 Oct 2004 05:06:15 CDT</lastBuildDate>
<item>...

The link [example.org...] matches precisely with the site shown in the serps (though [example.org...] is also listed half way down)

The rss feed itself is from [example.org...] - could this be a problem?

The site is in the Yahoo! directory - was even a pick of the day a while back - so the kind of thing I'd think would be wanted.

I don't have any more ideas...

[AjiNIMC]

[feedvalidator.org...] - Is checking and validating is needed , since I have submistted to some of the feed engines and directories, will they reject my feed because of that.

Thanks
AjiNIMC

[gethan]

I've had some feed back from Yahoo - looks like the following is required:

The feed filename must end in rss or rdf - so my /rss/feed.php was the problem. (I've seen XML also in the SERPS)

I'll let everyone know when the serps include the RSS info also.

> Is checking and validating is needed

I would strongly recommend ensuring that your feed validates - the are many other feed robots and places to submit RSS - some rejected my feed due to problems that I found with the validator. Its just good practice to validate your html and xml. (the filename was not flagged by the validator hence thought it was fine)

[AjiNIMC]

/rss/feed.php was the problem

I have seen that most the feeds , or if I can saw dynamic generated feeds are php , as with php lifes becomes easier , else I will have to run cron to re-write my xml (if my hosts does allow .xml to pass through the php interpreter).

Lets ask yahoo to correct this biggy fallback before Google does that.

Thanks
Aji

[gethan]

> I will have to run cron to re-write my xml (if my hosts does allow .xml to pass through the php interpreter)

Try in .htaccess

AddType application/x-httpd-php .rss

As a first step and copy your existing feed to - feed.rss or something.

Fingers crossed my feedwill be listed in Yahoo SERPs soon :)

[Dave_Brain]

I don't think we're yet to hit on the answer. My feed is and always was xml although I've duplicated it as an RDF just to make sure...how long might it take for Yahoo to see this once I've added it to their RSS directory? Incidentally, why doesn't Yahoo update the contextual par in the results page, my entry looks very, very dated these days?

db

[Mike McKnight]

i have tried 3 times to submit my rss feed to Y! and only have 3 rejected replies to show for it, looking for any help that can be offered.
I used Search Engine Watch tutorial to construct my feed. Used RSS V2.0 and have saved the file as feed-1.xml
I have use two different validator services to check
the file, and they both valadated OK, have also saved the file as feed-1.rss, but still get rejected at Y!. The replies show a bunch of header lines but the only text that seems to be an explaination of the reason for rejection is this one
Yahoo ID: ********* : no amt link
what is "no amt link" mean?
I have been able to submit to other directories and haven't seemd to have any problems with them, just Y!
In their RSS-FAQ page they state that if you add your feed to your My Y! page that the Y! rss directory will automatically pick up your feed and add it to the directory, I can see mt headlines and feed items listed in MY Y!, but when I try to search for my feed listing it doesn't show.
I have read the other suggestions offered so far in this thread, and have tried a few things, but no luck. Any other comments would be very much appreciated,
Mike

[gethan]

Update: no change.

Anyone had any luck?

[Dave_Brain]

Nope! I had a reply from Yahoo who told me my RSS feed was invalid, which is b*ll*cks it's perfectly valid in all the validators I tested. So not sure what they're on about. I asked them whether I could pay to get my "View as XML" tag but they didn't reply

d

[gethan]

Update: My site now includes the RSS information and links. Don't know exactly when this changed, I haven't checked since before the new year.

[Iguana]

the Y! rss directory will automatically pick up your feed and add it to the directory, I can see mt headlines and feed items listed in MY Y!, but when I try to search for my feed listing it doesn't show.

Am I being really stupid? I haven't ever found an actually Y! rss Directory. What I read above implies there is one. All I thought you could do was add your feeds to MyYahoo and get that View As XML link. Once added your feed will than appear as a suggestion when someone searches for the keyword 'widget' on the 'Add RSS Source' search in myYahoo. Have I missed something?

Also, anyone else find that only a maximum of 10 items ever get added when you import an OPML file into MyYahoo?