I’ve been working on a personal project that requires RSS feed* URLs and surprisingly, they haven’t been as easy to locate as one would think. So, as I like to do when it’s difficult finding information online, I share my findings/research with the six people that come to my site (hi mom!).
Here are 3 4 ways to find a website’s RSS feel URL:
- RSS Feed Icon: Some sites keep the guessing to a minimum by including an RSS icon on their site – normally next to their Facebook and Twitter icons. If they have the RSS icon, right click to copy link address
- Instant RSS Search: This is a great, simple RSS search engine. It’s mostly intuitive. Just plug in a website and it’ll return the feed if ot exists. The site also allows for search operators. Go to Instant RSS Search *When it can’t find a feed, it doesn’t tell you
- Use Feed.ly: Use this feedreader’s search – the only problem is that there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to simply copy the feed URL. Discover RSS URLs at Feedly
- Go Directly to the Website: If neither one of these tools work, then go straight to the website. When at the website’s page you want the RSS for, right click and ‘view source’. From there, do a ‘Ctrl-F’ and search for “rss” or “feed” If the website page has one, this method will find it.
Am I missing a tool? Is there an easier way? Let me know in the comments.
* RSS feeds allow people to easily subscribe to a website. One of the popular uses of an RSS feed are feed readers such as Google Reader (now-defunct) and Feedly. If you’ve ever seen a website display another website’s news in a widget – that’s an RSS feed.