Google news has opened the door to syndicate results. Each news page and news category contains a link for feeds in RSS or Atom. Keyword results are also now syndicated. With some restrictions, the feeds can also be incorporated into personal websites.

Google has chosen to use the generic term "feed" in their materials. I think this is a good move - although RSS has some strong roots, it really is not the only feed option. It's also, perhaps, a more mainstream-friendly term. The typical "orange" subscription button is not present, but perhaps we'll see it added in future.

I am especially happy about the keyword syndication and have been waiting for it. I subscribe to a whole ton of keywords/key phrases for the many blogs I write on. However, some topics are tricky, and searches of PubSub, Technorati and others often yields spam blogs (arg) or irrelevant content.

For example, a search for "coffee" on Technorati (search/tag) is something I'm very interested in for my coffee blog. On the search side, I get every comment made about having coffee in the morning or jumping off to a cafe. On the tag side, I get all the blogs I already subscribe to. So, nothing new. Nothing relevant. However, if we jump over to Google News now, the search yields some good stuff - some studies, news, press releases and market changes - all of which yield new fodder for my blog.

The downside: the feeds look like crap and there is no way to change it. Small summary only, including links to all "related" items. I agree the latter is great, so I don't get the same story a million times, but I really do like my full text. By restricting the format of the item as is done here, I don't think Google is realizing the true benefit to be had by disseminating the news in RSS/Atom format.

Here is what a single feed item looks like:

Via Steve Rubel and Blog Herald

Technorati Tags: Google, RSS, Atom, Feeds, Syndication, News