The way I understand things, half the "value" of a link is applied to the page it goes to, and the other half to the domain itself. Maybe half isn't a technical term.

A client of ours is considering FeedBurner, but doesn't want to hurt themselves by losing links. I started telling them how I'd never seen an RSS feed in a Google search result in my life, but this fact about domain strength came up, and I'm not sure what the answer ultimately is.

Thoughts?

FeedBurner won't keep you from getting links. People are linking to the page itself and not the feed. FeedBurner will make it easier to subscribe and help you know how many people have subscribed.

Feeds can get indexed and rank, though. A couple of years ago Google decided my posts and the feed of that post were duplicates and made the decision that the feed was the better one to use for the purposes of ranking. Sadly they were wrong and I watched my traffic from Google approach zero. I eventually figured out what was happening and blocked the feeds in my robots.txt and traffic was back in a few days.

But using FeedBurner isn't going to cost your client links. People don't search out the feed to link to. They'll grab the URL of the page itself.

Hmm? I just tried an experiment. I loaded my feedburner feed in the address bar and clicked one of the links to my post. The http headers showed a 302 redirect to the post instead of the 301 I was expecting.

I still don't think you have anything to worry about. Lots of good reasons to use FeedBurner.

Danny Sullivan wrote a really pertinent article about how you can still use Feedburner and have the links on your domain here: http://searchengineland.com/070110-111256.php

I personally don't mind linking to feeds.feedburner.com and I'm not worried about "losing links" since RSS != actual content and Feedburner isn't spidered (at least not to my knowledge). One day, I might move over, but it may be complicated for me since I already have some crazy 301 redirects in place for Feedburner due to a mistake I made when employing Feedburner only after my blog was well-established. Oops.

I've actually seen Feedburner come up in searches. I put about 10 minutes into some really basic research when I got back to my desk, just enough to be dangerous.

The crazy thing is I'm just a C# and SQL programmer! Even in the tech world, we've got the idea that some people "know computers" and others, well, are analysts or designers. Sorry, end of rant tag.

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

I've actually seen Feedburner come up in searches. I put about 10 minutes into some really basic research when I got back to my desk, just enough to be dangerous.

Feeds or the normal Feedburner site? I've seen the latter, but never the former.

A couple of years ago my feeds were showing up in a site: search for my site, but I don't think they ever showed in search results for a query.

Originally Posted by vangogh

A couple of years ago my feeds were showing up in a site: search for my site, but I don't think they ever showed in search results for a query.

I've seen that happen as recently as a few weeks ago. I think Google has gotten better at it, though.

Originally Posted by tamar

Feeds or the normal Feedburner site? I've seen the latter, but never the former.

Sorry. I was thinking Technorati, not Feedburner.

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

Sorry. I was thinking Technorati, not Feedburner.

Yeah, that doesn't add too much value or relevancy to the search results at all.

Originally Posted by tamar

I've seen that happen as recently as a few weeks ago. I think Google has gotten better at it, though.

I still block the feeds in my robots.txt, but I think you're right Google is getting better at it. I thought it was also partly a WordPress issue and recent versions have helped alleviate the problem. I've been seeing a lot more suggestions not to block Google from spidering the feeds, but I'm still blocking for now. I've been meaning to look into it more.

Originally Posted by vangogh

I still block the feeds in my robots.txt, but I think you're right Google is getting better at it. I thought it was also partly a WordPress issue and recent versions have helped alleviate the problem. I've been seeing a lot more suggestions not to block Google from spidering the feeds, but I'm still blocking for now. I've been meaning to look into it more.

Let me know what you find. I actually see some MovableType RSS information every so often, so I guess it's not completely gone, but who knows... I don't check very frequently.

Will do. A few people have asked me about it recently and it's on my list of things to research.