Google purchased Feedburner, an RSS management company, in May 2007. At the time, it seemed a bit odd, but the launch of Google Reader in 2005 helped support Google’s affection for blogs and their potential impact on the future of search.
More proof of the appreciation? The “more” drop-down on Google’s homepage has the options of both “Blogs” and “Reader.” And did I mention Google owns Blogger?
Anyway, ranking content in blog search is difficult, particularly with the advent of splogs. But blogs offer fresh content, which Google likes. What a dilemma! Albeit early, I believe Google is working hard to better understand how they can filter the good blog content from the bad, and thus improve their search rankings.
Consider the following:
1. Feedburner helps Google track the number of opt-ins a blog has.
2. Google Reader allows users to “star” posts.
3. Reader also allows user to share blog posts.
4. Google likely know which posts you actually read and how long you dedicate to a particular post.
5. Owning Blogger, the No. 2 provider, provides a wealth of information as well.
So, the point is, in knowing they need more than just links to serve better search results (and fight spam), I think Google is looking to some of the above in order to help them out and diversify their algorithm.
Your plan of action?
Create content – blogs, articles, podcasts, jobs – that users can opt-in to get via RSS. If you can coordinate the process via Feedburner, that’s a plus. Then, be remarkable with the content you make. This will energize readers to, well, read, “star” and share your content (they might even link to you). All of which I believe Google is tracking and giving growing weight to its algorithm as time goes by.
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