How Weblog Monitors Automatically Discover RSS Feeds
Dave Aiello wrote, "I noticed that BlogStreet had no idea that CTDATA, RCNJ, and AAHArefs exist and I decided to figure out why. One reason appeared to be that BlogStreet uses a mechanism to automatically discover the URL for the RSS feed for a website."
"In the BlogStreet FAQ, I found an entry explaining how BlogStreet discovers the RSS feed for a website:"
The easiest and confirming to standards {sic} way is to include the following meta tag on your blog's index page:<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="__YOUR_RSS_URL__">
RSS Discovery has other algorithms to identify a blog's RSS feed but the above mentioned is the best manner to do so.
Dave Aiello continued, "Once I found this information, and changed the websites' headers accordingly, I wondered how long this standard had been in existence. I googled a portion of the meta tag, and found reference to an update to the standard on DiveIntoMark.com on June 2, 2002. So, this standard must have been developed around the middle of last year."