I have a number of topics (audio, blogs, local, news, photography etc) and group feeds together in Reader according to the topic. These topics are broadly equivalent to the ones I use as filters in Gmail

1. Give important and applicable substance: Make sure that the content you publish via RSS feeds is useful and relevant to the people you want to reach. This can incorporate blog entries, news refreshes, articles, digital broadcasts, or some other substance design. By conveying top notch content, you increment the possibilities holding supporters and drawing in new ones.

2. Format feeds more effectively: In order to guarantee compatibility with a variety of feed readers and aggregators, pay close attention to the formatting of your RSS feed. To avoid issues with parsing, use valid XML syntax and adhere to the RSS specification. Test your feed in a variety of RSS readers to make sure it looks and works right.

3. Incorporate total and brief portrayals: Ensure your feed things incorporate total and compact depictions that precisely sum up the substance. Without having to click through to the entire article or post, this enables subscribers to quickly evaluate the relevance and value of each item.

4. Updates on a regular basis: Set a regular publishing schedule and update your RSS feed on a regular basis. This lays out entrust with your endorsers and keeps them locked in. Subscribers may lose interest or unsubscribe as a result of infrequent or irregular updates.

Reading through blogs, news sources, Google alerts and hundreds of RSS feeds on a daily basis can be really tricky. You subscribe to news sources and overtime, your reading list grows in size. This has its pros and cons.

The advantage of increasing your reading list is that you expose yourself to more information, which is good for anyone who wants to keep himself updated with news and developments happening around his are of interest. The disadvantage here is that too much information can be extremely distracting, and might disturb your workflow and other important tasks . (Image courtesy – Open Kitchen España.)

Just as a car needs scheduled maintenance, your RSS reader also needs routine clean up and organization. Otherwise, you will find yourself in a state of “Information overload” and won’t be able to find out the specific information you’re looking for.

Rssreaders Over these years I have used a lot of online as well as desktop RSS readers but finally settled with Google Reader and FeedDemon. Both are simple to use RSS application, offer sync and there are so many features like creating tags, folders, searching feeds, filtering items by keyword. You just can’t afford to miss them when it comes to proper RSS management.

2 . USE FOLDERS TO ORGANIZE YOUR READING LIST If you’re not using folders and have all the sources stacked up one after another on the left sidebar, you are wasting a lot of time.

The reason is simple: you have to click through each individual feed, read the unread items and then move on to the next source. This can be avoided by using the “next Item” and “Previous item” links (keyboard shortcuts are J and K respectively), but both these methods take a lot of time.

Instead, you should create folders in Google reader and organize feed items by topic and category. Create a folder named “Microsoft” and put all the sources who regularly blog about Microsoft in this folder. When Microsoft rolls out a major upgrade or releases a new product, you can quickly jump to this folder and scan all the headlines in less than a minute.

1. FORGET ALPHABETICAL SORTING AND SORT ITEMS BY PRIORITY Dragdropsorting Thumb Google reader automatically sorts your feed items in Alphabetical order, which is not very useful.

In Alphabetical sorting, a feed item whose name starts with Z will be placed way down the column and the the updates from this source will be available at the bottom. If this is a really popular source and you want to read the updates from this specific feed first, you gotta move it up.

Hence, get rid of alphabetical sorting and rearrange all the items according to priority. Trusted and popular sources should be moved up while newcomers stay down the order.

1. THE “EXPERIMENTAL” FOLDER I use an “experimental” watch folder for feeds and sources whom I have subscribed recently.

Why?

Since these are newcomers to my reading list and I don’t know whether their content will be meaningful to me in the coming days, I keep them in this “experimental” folder. This folder is often placed down the folder list and I hardly pay attention to the items in this folder (daily attention I mean). They are kept on a “scrutiny” basis for 2-3 weeks until some are recruited as permanent members of my reading list.

Sources in this folder are often unsubscribed if their content is not related to topics of my interest. And fresh newcomers are recruited every 2-3 weeks. The cycle goes on.

1. CREATE A “VERY IMPORTANT” FOLDER AND MOVE IT TO THE TOP It makes perfect sense to create an “Important” folder and move all the credible sources to this one. This folder will contain only those feeds whom you enjoy reading on a regular basis and can’t afford to miss. When you are back from a vacation and there are lots of unread items, simply scan through this folder and save time by ignoring all other unread items.

2. CREATE “WATCHES” IN FEEDDEMON FeedDemon has an interesting Watch folder feature which can be used to find items that have specific words and phrases in the title or body.

Let’s say you want to get alerts whenever there is any new article discussing about Windows 8. Create a keyword watch for your search and get automatic desktop alerts when someone from your reading list has a new post on “Windows 8”

Feed Demonwatch Thumb The watch folder is also handy when you want to ignore articles about certain topics. If you are not interested in anything iPhone, create a watch for iPhone, let FeedDemon aggregate all the posts about iPhone at one place and then quickly mark this watch as read. Saves time!

1. SUBSCRIBING TO LOT OF MEMES AND NEWS SOURCES? USE LIVE BOOKMARKS Subscribing to the RSS feeds of news sources like Techmeme, Tweetmeme, Digg and other websites who publish a lot of content every single day is not very fruitful. Although the content is good and fresh, there is a high chance that you will feel tired browsing them since they publish and aggregate news in huge numbers.

In this case, remove the subscriptions from Google Reader but subscribe to them in Mozilla Live bookmarks. This is because you can quickly scan all the headlines from your browser’s bookmarks toolbar and read the specific story which sounds appealing.

Firefoxlivebookmarks Thumb 8. REMOVE SOURCES THAT ARE NOT MEANINGFUL If you don’t enjoy reading a specific source, get rid of it. It’s that simple.

One good way to determine which sources haven’t updated in a while is to look at Google reader trends. Switch to the Inactive and Obscure tab and find those sources who haven’t updated their sites for a long time. It’s time to unsubscribe!

Subscriptiontrends Thumb 9. CHOOSE YOUR SOURCES WISELY Finally, you should have your own criteria in place before you subscribe to a new feed. Some questions to ask:

Does this site produces unique and up-to-date information? Don’t always go by the name or brand. Just because a site has 20K RSS subscribers, does not necessarily mean that you have to subscribe to it. Instead, read through some of the older posts to see whether the author provides his own perspective on the topic. How much in-depth information is provided by the source? At what level? Frequency is not a deciding factor but if the last post was published in 2008, you might want to move on. Well these were some of my tips for better RSS management. Have your own methods? Let’s hear about them in the comments section.

About the author: Amit writes a tech blog at Ampercent and is a former contributor at GT Cool Stuff. Check out his Google reader tips to keep your RSS reading list organized by making use of keyword filters.

Last updated on 02 February, 2022

The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.

Read Next Reader Mode and Reading ListHow to Enable Safari Reading List and Reader Mode Apple's ingenuity has consistently earned praise and a seal of approval from users worldwide. Beginner’s RSS Guide & Why It is a Great Way to Consume Information The web changes daily. How To Add Website RSS Feeds To Your Windows Sidebar We talked about adding gadgets to the sidebar in Windows Vista and 7 sometime back. Top 5 RSS Feed Readers for Windows 10 on Windows Store In this mobile-centric world, we still spend a good part of the day working on PCs and Laptops. NetNewsWire vs Feedly: Which RSS Reader App Is Better on iPhone Reading Twitter, Google News, and Facebook for news is distracting and overwhelming at times. NetNewsWire vs Reeder: Which RSS Reader App Is Better on iPhone While the RSS technology is over two decades old, there are enough folks still sticking to RSS readers for reading the content. 5 Best RSS Reader Apps for Android When you want to follow fresh content on your favorite topics, writers, publications, and channels, nothing beats an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) reader app. Top 5 RSS Reader Apps for iPhone Today, we have several modes and tools for consuming news through dedicated apps. SHARE ON JOIN THE NEWSLETTER Your email address SUBSCRIBE

WRITTEN BY Abhijeet Mukherjee Abhijeet Mukherjee is the founder, publisher and editor of Guiding Tech. He's a web publisher who’s been working online full time since 2008. He loves all things tech and has also written for some of the top blogs on the planet.

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PCMag Nav Logo Search Page Desktop Banner PCMag editors select and review products independently. If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our testing. Home News Get Organized Get Organized: Clean Up Your RSS Feed Reader With the dirge still playing for Google Reader and RSS fans migrating to new services, now is an ideal time to reorganize your feeds. Here are some suggestions for how to do it.

By Jill Duffy July 1, 2013 Get Organized: Clean Up Your RSS Feed Reader Nothing motivates me to clean up like having to move. When I move house, which I do more often than I like, I see it as a time to purge junk and scrub the new place from corner to corner before moving in any of my stuff. And that's how I feel about RSS feed readers right now.

Today marks the end of Google Reader, a day when Reader users will be faced with picking a new feed reader or giving up on RSS altogether. But change can be good, because a move to a new RSS feed reader could mean it's time to clean house, get rid of all those dead blog feeds, cut the news feeds that are in fact blatant celebrity gossip channels, and re-organize what's left into a neat set of folders.

Here are some ideas on how you can clean up and organize your RSS feeds quickly and efficiently.

Organize By Theme Probably the most common way people organize their RSS feeds is to group them by theme or topic. For example, a folder of foods labeled "Business News" would have all your favorite RSS feeds for business news, naturally.

I have folders of feeds called "Food Blogs US" and "Food Blogs AUS" where I keep an eye on the American and Australian food scenes, respectively (a lot of neat food-related stuff has been happening in Sydney these last few years, by the way).

130701_getorg_rss-topics

This solution works if you like to read your feeds based on topic. But in some cases, depending on your subscriptions and how you read them, it doesn't make sense to organize your RSS feeds by topic.

The 'Email' Approach Another tactic would be to move into folders all the feeds you don't read all that often and stick everything else into an "Inbox" folder.

Most of us have plenty of feeds that we only glance at or scan, and hardly ever read. You could put these lesser-read feeds into folders labeled however you choose, and leave your most important feeds in a folder called "_INBOX," using that underscore to make sure it sorts to the top of the pile alphabetically.

130701_getorg_rss-inbox

This approach mimics what some people do with email: leave the most important stuff in the inbox where it's most visible and move to a folder everything else. Pretty smart, yet entirely simple, right?

But actually, this doesn't work equally well in all RSS feed readers. It's a breeze in Digg Reader because that service lets you order your feeds and folders any which way. Feedly, though, puts all your loose feeds into a folder called "Uncategorized." In other words, you can't have loose feeds. Everything must be in a folder, but you can drag those folders into any order you like. In The Old Reader any uncategorized feeds go into a "Subscriptions" folder.

If you want ultimate control over your folder organization and feed list order, Digg Reader is probably your best bet, although it comes with other limitations, such as the inability to import OPML files from other services. If you can't import an OPML file, you won't be able to import your feeds from another service (you will have access to your Google Reader feeds if you had set up Digg Reader prior to July 1); and you won't be able to do the other tricks described below in the section "Cleaning up the OPML File."

Organize By How You Read Another way to organize folders in your RSS feed reader would be not by theme but by how you read, which is what I started to hint at in that last tip about mimicking the structure of email.

130701_getorg_rss-how-you-read

Heck, you could even start with a folder called "INBOX" where you put feeds you check most frequently. Maybe your next feed folder is called "Headline News" and contains RSS feeds of breaking news sources and blogs that you use to scan headlines. Another folder might be called "Long-Form Reading," for feeds of content that tend take more time and focus, reads to which you do typically devote some time each week. Maybe there's another folder called "Monthly Check-in." You get the idea.

Cleaning Up in the OPML File (It's Easier Than it Sounds) Cleaning Up in the OPML File (It's Easier Than it Sounds) What about getting rid of old feeds? It can be truly time consuming to weed them out one by one using the provided tools inside your RSS feed reader. That's fine for removing only a few feeds, but for bigger jobs, there's a shortcut that will cut down your time significantly.

You can instead do some cleanup work right in the OPML file. If you exported your data from Google Reader through Google Takeout, it's the file in the downloaded folder called "subscriptions.xml." Yes, it ends in .xml, and yet it's called an OPML file. It's confusing.

In any event, that file contains lines of code indicating all the feeds to which you had subscribed in Google Reader, as well as how you organized them.

You can delete old feed subscriptions much faster if you just edit that file. Here's how (text instructions below the video):

1. Right-click on the file subscriptions.xml.

2. Choose "open with" and select a text-editing program. On a Mac, I used Text Edit.

3. Select "file > save as," and create a copy of the file so that you have the original copy in case you make a mistake.

4. If you're not used to looking at code, the page is going to seem like gobbledygook, but don't let it scare you off. Drag the window as wide as you can make it, as the lines will be easier to read that way.

5. If you know the names of the feeds you want to delete, the quickest way to identify them is to use the "find" command, which is ctrl+F in Windows or command (Apple key)+F in Mac OS. Type in some word that you know is the feed you want to delete. For example, I have a friend with a blog that she has abandoned called "Is it Ripe Yet?" so I can do a "find" search for the word "ripe," and, voilà.

6. Rather than start deleting willy-nilly, I decided to just add a bunch of paragraph returns around the items I want to delete. That let me isolate them and review them before I started to wipe them out. Each entry will be entirely contained in angle brackets, like <this>.

Here's a real example using my friend's now defunct blog:

<outline text="Is It Ripe Yet?" title="Is It Ripe Yet?" type="rss" xmlUrl="http://crohara.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default" htmlUrl="http://crohara.blogspot.com/"/>

So, you'd want to delete that whole thing, starting with the open angle bracket and ending with the final close angle bracket.

1. Then just go ahead and review what you've isolated and delete them. If you're feeling saucy, you can manipulate the file in other ways, too. For example, you can change the labels or folder organization of your feeds by editing that xml file. It's just code. It's not going to bite. (But do save the original file in case you mess up.)

2. Finally, save the file, and be sure to append ".xml" to the end of the file name. Your computer might send up a warning sign, but just tell it that yes, you want .xml.

Remember, you have the original file saved separately in case you mess up.

Another Way to Find Dead Feeds If all you want to do is identify feeds that haven't been update in a long time, another way to do it without looking at code would be to import your subscriptions.xml file from Google Takeout to The Old Reader. You don't have to commit to using The Old Reader for good—although you might choose to because it's a great service—but you can still use it to your advantage. Here's how:

1. Open an account on The Old Reader.

2. Choose to upload an OPML file. When prompted, pick the file called subscriptions.xml.

3. Let The Old Reader import your feeds, and when it's done, take a look at the right side of the screen. The Old Reader lists for you any feeds that haven't been updated in at least three months.

4. You can now delete those feeds either from within The Old Reader, or by editing the .xml file as described in the previous section.

5. If you don't want to use The Old Reader as your new RSS feed reading service, just export your OPML data when you're done with the cleanup job. Go to Settings, and look at the very bottom of the page. Way down at the foot you'll find a link saying "export your feeds." Click it, and a list of your feeds will open in a new tab. Right-click it and select "save as," and put that puppy where ever you want. This file will have .opml as its file extension.

6. You can now upload that new OPML file to whatever service you choose, so long as it accepts uploads. For example, Taptu doesn't support them.

Cleaning House Getting shoved off Google Reader could be just what you need if your RSS feeds have gotten out of control. If you're going to take the time to migrate to a new service, you might as well also use that opportunity to make your reading experience a little more pleasant and streamlined, too.

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Do everything better Subscribe HOME LATEST FOOD TECH ENTERTAINMENT HEALTH MONEY HOME & GARDEN RELATIONSHIPS PARENTING WORK PRIME DAY TRAVEL LIFE IN GENERAL We may earn a commission from links on this page. How Can I Organize My RSS Feeds So They’re More Manageable? By Melanie Pinola PublishedJanuary 5, 2012 Comments (60) Dear Lifehacker, I subscribe to a lot of newsfeeds, which makes me feel like I'm on top of everything on the internet—except now I'm feeling overwhelmed with all the folders and hundreds of feeds and constant flood of posts in my newsreader. I still want access to all the news and information, but what can I do to better organize it so I stay sane?

Thanks, Buried by RSS

Dear BbR, You're definitely not alone in feeling the RSS information overload. As wonderful as it is to be able to tap into all the information in the world, there are only so many hours in the day to spend consuming it all. Not to worry: With a little pruning, filtering and prioritizing, we can turn the deluge of data into a nice, manageable stream of content. Here's how:

Prune Your RSS Subscriptions The first thing to do is get rid of the feeds that you really don't get any use out of: Feeds that are never updated, mostly duplicate content you already get elsewhere, or simply don't read any more. These subscriptions are just taking up space in your reader and distracting you from the ones you do want to see.

Weed Out Inactive, Obscure, and Overactive Feeds If you're using Google Reader, go to the Trends report under "All Items" and click the "Inactive" tab to find and delete them.

Then click the "Most Obscure" tab, where you may find stray feeds with only a handful of subscribers. Sometimes this might be because you at some point were looking for updates on a very singular search term (for example, I had an Amazon price history feed in there for a TV model I was looking at) or just sites that aren't that popular. Either way, take a look to clean out the ones you don't need.

Part of the problem may also be feeds that send an overwhelming number of updates each day. You'll find those subscriptions on the "Frequently Updated" tab. You don't have to unsubscribe to those feeds, however, if you're still interested in them. See below for how to filter those feeds so you just see more relevant posts.

Besides Google Reader, other web-based and desktop news readers offer similar statistics and tools. Our favorite Mac news reader application NetNewsWire and favorite Windows news reader FeedDemon, for example, will both show you the "dinosaurs" that haven't been updated in a while and let you unsubscribe quickly.

The Best News Reader for Mac Reading a lot of blogs can be tough to manage without an RSS news reader, which consolidates…

Read more Get Rid of Duplicate Content Next take a look at your subscriptions for repetitive posts. You might have duplicate content if you follow many similar sites (especially news sites) that cover the same beat. Some sites which aggregate content for a specific topic can also overlap your other subscriptions. Consider keeping only those that are most comprehensive or updated most often.

Also be wary about using Google Alerts in your feeds. I used to have Google Alerts delivered via RSS for general topics like laptops and Android. But then I also had feeds for sites that cover news on those topics too, so I would end up with duplicates, triplicates, and so on of the same articles in my folders. What I learned was to not make Google Alerts for generic terms like those, but rather rely on my feeds, and if I need to find more content on the subject, just do a search on Google News.

Also, unless a site fits into several categories (like Lifehacker), it's redundant to place it in a bunch of folders. No need to put Gizmodo in both "tech news" and "gadgets"—if you'll be checking both folders, at least.

Keep Only the Essential Feeds Finally, think about the categories of feeds that you really want to be watching and reading about. You might have a passing interest in a bunch of topics, but be ruthless in your assessment if you really are getting anything out of each category. As an example, I used to have a folder with feeds about "green living," a topic I'm interested in but don't need to read about daily, weekly, or even monthly.

Filter or Fine-Tune Your Feeds for the Posts You Want to Read Once you've got your subscriptions all sorted out, if there are still too many posts to look at in a day, it's time to filter them so you only see the topics you care about most. For example, you might be interested in new downloads, but not for Apple devices. A filter or subscribing to a site's special sub-feeds can help you weed out those posts.

Subscribe to topic-specific feeds: Lifehacker, for example, offers several different feeds. You can subscribe to the whole enchilada with the full feed, just the top posts of the day, and even customize the feeds by tag or combination of tags (e.g., "top" "Mac OS X" "downloads").

New Lifehacker Feature: Tag combinations Just out of the oven here at Lifehacker: some extra tagaliciousness for power readers. You already…

Read more Creating your own filters: You have several options to create filters of your own on any site. Here are a few:

Take a look at previously mentioned FeedRinse, which filters out posts for your individual subscriptions by keyword, tag, author, and even profanity. Another option, if you're a Chrome and Google Reader user, is the Google Reader Filter by Feed/Folder userscript. This adds a filtering box above your feeds to weed out words for an individual subscription or an entire folder. Probably the most robust RSS feed hacking tool is much-discussed Yahoo Pipes, which combines many feeds into one sortable, filterable, and translatable feed (see how to use it here). I'd recommend using FeedRinse if you do your RSS reading on a lot of different devices, the Google Reader Filter by Feed/Folder for quick filtering on-demand, and Yahoo Pipes if you really want to fine-tune your feeds.

Prioritize Your Feeds Now that you've got the most valuable subscriptions showing the most relevant post topics, it's time to organize them.

There are several strategies you can use. It doesn't matter which you choose as long as it works for you. So here's an overview:

Organize by priority: In a previous Google Reader decluttering article, we suggested a folder structure that ranked groups of feeds by priority: Favorite (to read daily) feeds at the top, then primary sources (go-to sites) and secondary sources (all other news feeds). I've adopted a similar strategy, with the feeds I read first thing in the morning at the top, but labeled like this "- Favorites" so that no matter what news reader I'm using, it stays at the top. For tech news, I have "- Tech News: Tier 1" and "- Tech News: Tier 2" folders. This just makes the ocean of tech news posts more navigatible. You could do the same for any category you follow heavily.

How to Declutter and Streamline Your Google Reader Inbox If your Google Reader inbox has grown out of control, and you're spending more time trying to keep…

Read more Organize by time: You might also group feeds by when you should be reading them. You could have daily (and perhaps am and pm subgroups), weekly, and monthly groups that correlate to how you catch up on sites. Or a weekday and weekend/nights grouping.

Organize by topic: Probably the most popular want to organize your feeds is by topic (especially if you have a variety of interests): tech, home, fun, etc. As mentioned above, though, be careful about having too many folders that overlap. Some news readers let you have subfolders, which is handy. This Google Reader: Nested Folders userscript can add the subfolders capability currently lacking in Google Reader.

Of course, you can use a combination of these strategies.

For each subscription, you can prioritize the posts as well. Previously mentioned PostRank is a Safari and Chrome extension that scores posts according to how popular it is. The drop-down filter of good, great, and best posts may help clear the RSS clutter.

More Efficiently Read Your Feeds Finally, with everything in place, start using your news reader more effectively by learning its keyboard shortcuts and using add-ons if available (see this guide for Google Reader keyboard shortcuts and add-ons).

Image for article titled How Can I Organize My RSS Feeds So They’re More Manageable? Hack Attack: Getting good with Google Reader by Adam Pash

Read more Remember, too, that RSS is more like a daily newspaper than it is email: Don't feel like you have to read every single item of every feed you subscribe to. There will always be new news to read.