RSS Feeds - Can be damaging for advertising?

[Moria]

I'm wondering about RSS feeds... Obviously they are industry standard to use these days and a great way of getting everything you want in one place from the sites you visit. However, is this not damaging to websites who let you have the whole article in the feed? This obviously means that you never once have to go on the original webpage the article came from. If you don't go to that site you don't see their adverts which means they don't make money... It feels the same to me as using Adblock, no adverts no money to the website (unless they sell something, obviously, but my question is related to websites which don't sell).

I've had a look around Google and couldn't find anything on the topic. Is someone able to clear this up for me please?

 

[RTM]

If your intent is to take fullfeed RSS content and republish it on your site, at the very least your site will get penalized by the major search engines for blatant content; especially if that's all there is.

Worse yet, if you do it where the site owner says that reproduction (on another site) is not allowed, then you're exposing yourself to a copyright infringement situation.

There are plenty of full feed services, but in general you get what you pay for.

As for the websites that do it, sometimes they knew that people will come to their site nonetheless ... to see content not distributed in the RSS feed (for example, comments on articles, discussion etc).

They can also monetize their RSS feed using infeed advertisements that are exclusive to the feed, etc.

Just a few thoughts.

Rob

 

[Moria]

No no no, you misunderstand. I've got no interest in making a site which displays RSS feeds. I'm just wondering why a site would give you the whole article with no adverts in it and pretty much no reason to actually go and visit their site.

 

[RTM]

Perhaps it's because the mission of the business / site is to get the message out ... or it can be branding / building trust.

For example, a non-profit, government agency or NGO may have the mission (and funding) to increase awareness of a certain cause.. or opinion)... and their goal is to have more people aware of it.

For example, a company such as IBM may publish a blog with zero advertisements or explicit call-to-action to purchase one of their products, but by getting the content out as far and wide as possible (with attribution to them in the article, of course) it just makes or keeps their company brand recognized.

Dunno if that makes sense...?

Rob