I use to love demonstrating RSS to audiences. Alas, I have never seen teachers become so sophisticated in their understanding and use of new technologies as during the past two or three years. I’m not sure if some sort of tipping point has been reached or if it’s because learning this stuff has become a whole lot easier.
Anyway, I was showing off a few things you can do with RSS the other day, when I found, in front of thousands (probably closer to 12), that Google had removed its RSS subscribe link in its news search. Before now, when you conducted a Google News search, you could subscribe to that search in your reader, such that it would continue to inform you when new news is published that includes your search term or phrase. Very cool!
I did a little research this morning and found that the feeds are still there and they continue to work. You just have to manually rewrite the search URL, adding “&output=rss“. So if you search for “best wine” and the resulting URL is:
You just add the output like this:
…and you will be able to subscribe to that URL as an rss feed.
So why has Google made this harder to do?
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I demonstrated this feature yesterday in a workshop. I hadn’t noticed they removed the link; I pointed out the “RSS” button in the address bar in Safari. You could likely do the same using the live bookmarks icon in Firefox.
David,
I seem to have found a solution. After you get your desired news feed, scroll to the bottom of the page and click, “Add a custom section for “___” to Google News. WHen you click that, you get the familiar “add to Google Reader” page.
OOPS. It’s “Add a News Gadget” Sorry. Works the same way as the old “RSS” button.
At least in Firefox, you can still click on RSS icon in location bar to subscribe to news search feed. Doesn’t answer your question but a little easier than the workaround you found.
The search feeds are either coming back or (like you said) just aren’t all the way out, yet. There’s still mention of how to use them in Google’s help documentation: http://www.google.com/support/news/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=59255
David,
Try this…actually kinda neat.
Go to Google News.
Conduct Advanced Search. (I always choose to sort by newest article at the top)
Click Search.
On result page, scroll down to near bottom and select Add a Custom Section for “search term” to Google News.
This is now on your Google News page, on left side along with Top Stories, US News, etc. at the bottom.
Clicking on your new link will take you to a page where you can add RSS if you choose to do so.
Yes, a little more difficult, but the added feature of customizing your news has some advantages too.
Ric
Hi Dave,
This is disappointing and hopefully is temporary.
I did find that if you simply paste the search URL ie:
http://news.google.com/news?pz=1&ned=us&hl=en&q=cash+for+clunkers
into the Add a Subscription blank of GoogleReader, it seems to create the feed.
All the best,
Doug
Hi Dave,
I know where you’re coming from. It is very frustrating when features are removed or changed – especially when you are attempting to demo them to a group! Keeps us on our toes, I guess.
Here’s another thing to try: In Firefox and Safari (at least on my Mac) an RSS button appears in the location bar of any site that is RSS-ready. If I click the RSS button that is on the right side of the URL, I can easily add a news search to Google Reader.
– Tammy Worcester
Some information from the google news forum: http://ow.ly/hsT8 Sounds like they’re not planning to resinstate the feed button. 🙁
And I think you’re right about the “tipping point”, I think we’ve gotten there because it’s gotten easier.
I found the RSS link at the very bottom of the news search results page, just under the search box at the bottom of the page. Hope this helps.
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