Publishing Full RSS vs. Summary RSS Feeds
One comment left on my previous post about what makes a good blog said that a good blog should publish full RSS feeds. Jamsi, the comment-poster, said a damn good blog publishes full feeds and that JOAB should fix its RSS feed as such.
By default, WordPress publishes feeds in full, and it’s up to the user to turn full syndication off (meaning only a post summary consisting of the first few sentences is published). We had the need to turn off full syndication because of the rampant content theft that’s been going on in the blogosphere, or what is usually called scraping and splogging. There are a lot of sites out there that pretend to aggregate information on the web, but in reality are lifting content directly off other blogs’ RSS feeds, and republishing these without permission, and with their advertisements plastered all over.
With this in mind, there are advantages and disadvantages to either full-post RSS and summary RSS feeds. Let me give the gist.
Full post RSS feeds: advantages
- You satisfy the power-users. Advanced blog readers usually read their news and blogs on feed readers, and they would rather not have to visit every other blog. Consider that power users in this regard have dozens, or even hundreds, of blogs to read every day.
- You can save on bandwidth. Feed readers, especially web-based ones, usually poll your site every once in a while (or everytime you publish and your site pings notification servers like weblogs.com). Since your readers don’t have to visit your site itself, you can save on bandwidth and server load.
Disadvantages
- Monetization. If you have AdSense or other ads on your site, you can’t monetize if you publish full RSS feeds, since your readers won’t find the need to visit your site (where the ads are). That’s unless you’re part of your program’s RSS monetization scheme.
- Content theft. Your site is more likely to be scraped and your content re-published elsewhere. If you publish only summaries, then scrapers are less likely to steal from your site, because your posts summaries might not make any sense to re-publish.
With the disadvantages cited above, it might make sense for you to choose partial RSS feeds. You can get better stats in terms of actual visits to your site, instead of via RSS. There’s also less likelihood of content theft. However, some people might find this cumbersome.
In truth, we would rather publish our full feed. But given the scraping issue, maybe this is not the time.
What about you? We’d love to hear whether you prefer full or partial RSS with your blog/s.
