What Is RSS?

Do You Understand What RSS Is?

RSS can have more than one meaning behind it. Usually, RSS stands for "really simple syndication" but it can also mean "rich site summary" or "RDF site summary".

The meaning behind, ’RDF’ is resource description framework. That answers the question of what is RSS, but not what it can do.

Exactly what is RSS in the realm of really simple syndication? It is a tool that allows sites to give a quick summary of important links and descriptions in XML format. This essentially allows them to syndicate their content by allowing other blog owners and webmasters to use this summary as part of a list of summaries on a specific topic.

Blogmasters and webmasters collect these various summaries with something called a feed aggregator or a feed reader. By using this tool they are essentially asking, "where is RSS" instead of "what is RSS" and then the feed reader works to find it.

The aggregator tool will locate RSS feeds and collect them from various sites such as, Yahoo and MSN, and will select smaller sites like a personal blog or a news sites.

Then the blogmaster or webmaster will use the script generated from the aggregator to insert it into their blogs. The RSS feed is then created in this way and will automatically start pulling news items and blog posts each time they come up. In addition, each time the site page or blog is refreshed, all the latest information collected will be displayed.

Taking advantage of this tool is good for two reasons. If you use your own RSS feed, you can get your content syndicated across the Internet without actually paying to submit dozens of press releases, or have to contact dozens of blog owners and webmasters.

Additionally, using RSS feeds is good if you own a blog and want to add fresh content. You will be able to put new content links and summaries anytime you want but without taking a lot of time to search out related information. You just need to choose a feed aggregator to select the potential feeds you can use and these can be found on a list of news sites and authority blogs. Additionally, you will be able to input your own selections, allowing you to create custom feeds.

Do you now understand the basics behind RSS? RSS is a simple way in which to drive traffic to your blog and to display summaries of other blogs.