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Sitemaps & feeds

RSS/Atom feed

Also known as: RSS feed, Atom feed, web feed, news feed

An RSS feed or Atom feed is an XML file that lists the latest content of a website in a machine-readable form, usually with title, link, date and a summary. Feed readers, podcast apps and search engines read feeds to find new content quickly. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.

How are feeds used for SEO?

Google accepts RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 feeds as sitemaps, so a feed URL can be submitted in Search Console like an XML sitemap. According to Google’s documentation, a feed only provides information on recent URLs. An XML sitemap describes all URLs of a site.

In a 2014 blog post, Google recommended using both: the sitemap for the full set of URLs, the feed for recent changes, because Google downloads feeds more often than large sitemaps. Neither guarantees indexing. The feed should contain only canonical URLs that Googlebot may fetch. The modification date belongs in <pubDate> (RSS) or <updated> (Atom) and should change only when the content changed meaningfully. With mRSS (Media RSS), a feed can also carry video details. Google’s docs say feeds cannot provide information about images or news.

The RSS Advisory Board maintains RSS 2.0, and Atom is an IETF standard (RFC 4287).

Example

XML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0">
  <channel>
    <title>Example Blog</title>
    <link>https://www.example.com/blog/</link>
    <description>New articles</description>
    <item>
      <title>How to fix hreflang errors</title>
      <link>https://www.example.com/blog/hreflang-errors/</link>
      <pubDate>Tue, 06 Oct 2026 08:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
    </item>
  </channel>
</rss>

RSS 2.0 requires title, link and description for the channel, and at least a title or description for each item.

Common mistakes

  • Treating the feed as a full URL list. According to Google, a feed only provides information on recent URLs. The XML sitemap covers the complete set.
  • Leaving special characters unescaped. As with all XML files, Google requires all tag values to be entity escaped.
  • Reporting images or news through a feed. As a sitemap, a feed can carry information about videos only, not about images or news, according to Google.

FAQ

Does a feed replace the XML sitemap? No. A feed lists only recent URLs, so the full list still belongs in an XML sitemap.

Does Google News use my RSS feed? Since late March 2025, Google News no longer uses RSS feeds submitted in Publisher Center. News content is found through regular crawling.

Sources

  1. Build and submit a sitemap (section RSS, mRSS, and Atom 1.0) – Google Search Central (last updated 2026-07-08)developers.google.com
  2. Best practices for XML sitemaps and RSS/Atom feeds – Google Search Central Blog (2014-10-16)developers.google.com
  3. RSS 2.0 Specification (version 2.0.11, 2009-03-30) – RSS Advisory Boardrssboard.org
  4. RFC 4287: The Atom Syndication Format (December 2005) – IETFrfc-editor.org
  5. Google News transitions to automatically-generated publication pages – Google News Publisher Center Helpsupport.google.com

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