An update on the ongoing problem with blo.gs updates…
Blo.gs is still reporting erroneous updates. Not as many as before, but still enough to be a problem. And I know why. As previously theorized, after Yahoo! took over the service, they began feeding it updates from their RSS sources. The problem is that there are many feeds for comments which (obviously) update more frequently than the main site content. Unfortunately, there’s probably not a foolproof way for Yahoo! to differentiate between a “content feed” and a “comment feed”.
I think that they could fix most of the problem programatically, though. It will require that they do some cross-checking, and store additional data about which feed for a site is the “main” one. They need to look at the <link> element for a feed and see where it points. Then check that URI, and see which feeds it lists. The first RSS/Atom feed listed should be considered authoritative for that site. It’s not a 100% guarantee, but I bet it would fix most of the problems, without too many bad side-effects.
I’ve sent this idea to my contact at Yahoo!, though I’m sure that they probably have already kicked plenty of ideas around, and are probably quietly working on their own solution. Hopefully we’ll continue to see improvements in the quality of the blo.gs data as time goes on.
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3 Comments
Since when is Craigslist classified site consider a weblog. Most of the recently updated sites are Craigslist sites.
I am new to this blogging thing and I see people talking about blog pings and and blo.gs and ping o matic but forgive my ignorance , what the heck is pinging a blog mean ?
George: If Craigslist is publishing RSS feeds, then that’s why the pages are showing up on blo.gs. Yahoo! is pushing all RSS updates it sees. It was a good idea in theory, but as we’ve seen, it needs some tweaking in practice.
Paul: It can be kind of hard to explain pinging. Rather than trying to explain it here, I think I’ll write a blog entry about it, so I can go more in-depth. Keep an eye on my blog for updates (or, you could sign up for a blo.gs account, add my site and a few others to your favorites, and you might start to get an idea of what it’s about).
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blo.gs back to normal?
I noticed earlier this morning that the blo.gs updates appear to be functioning (more or less) normally again. I haven’t heard anything from my contact at Yahoo!, so I don’t know if they found a better way to filter the information from feed update…