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Many of you read our post that we put up about why we’d cut our RSS feed. Just a few things to clarify (now that the story has blown up around the ‘net!):
1) We’re sorry for cutting off the RSS spigot. We got a bit of bad advice (not from google) about what was causing the problem, and in our hurry to get listed back on the search engine (where so much of our traffic comes from), we decided to do everything our smart friends told us. In addition to the RSS thing, we also spent a few hours petting our rabbits feet and forwarding out chain letters for good luck. (Those weren’t Google suggestions either.)
2) Just to let you know, after the post we did get in touch with someone at Google, and they’ve been helping us resolve the issue.
3) We’re trying to get the RSS up and running as fast as possible for those of you who rely on it. It should be up before too long!
That’s it. Oh, and 4) Jason had a beautiful daughter this weekend, so there might be a little less humor (and a little more of me) on the site. Hope you guys are up for it.
—
Dear Angry RSS Reader,
As you’ve probably noticed, our full RSS feed has been downgraded to a headline-only teaser. I’ve received some colorful emails regarding this development, and from now on, one of the interns will be starting my car.
Here’s the scoop:
• Last week, we realized that mentalfloss.com had been eliminated from Google. Even searches for “mental floss” return no results from our site. Since a healthy portion of our online subscriptions and t-shirt sales come from Google—not to mention thousands of blog visitors a day—we were freaked out.
• We learned that other sites were ‘duping’ our content with our full RSS feed—republishing every article in its entirety. And we learned that domains that are ‘duped’ can be blacklisted. (That’s probably not the technical term, but that’s the gist.)
• To fight back, we were advised to cut off the spigot, which meant scaling back our RSS access. So far, so good—the sites that were yoinking our material are no longer able to, and we’ve applied for Google ‘reconsideration.’
• Now we’re waiting and, eventually, seeing.
Our hope is that after all our Google issues are resolved, we can once again offer a full RSS feed for 100% of our content. We don’t want to alienate our small but—presumably—smart and influential RSS readership. And this isn’t a ‘let’s milk those people out of a few extra pageviews’ deal. Fortunately (or unfortunately), we don’t have enough RSS readers for that to matter. But for a tiny company that pays the bills (and, more importantly, my salary) by selling magazine subscriptions and t-shirts, these problems are a big deal, and we can’t do anything until we’re absolutely sure it won’t happen again. I’m not sure how long that will take.
I hope that makes sense. Sorry to cut you off like that! And if any of you are RSS experts with some advice, we’d love to hear it.
Cheers,
Jason
Boo to yoinkers. Do what you have to do.
LOL! My ReCAPTCHA is ‘information blank’
posted by adrienne on 7-16-2008 at 11:36 am
Jason,
While I do enjoy the larger RSS feed myself, I find myself disgusted with Google’s behavior. I’m sure it’s well documented and works for them. It’s too bad they feel the need to do absolutely no research on Mental Floss to find out what was going on or even contact someone to inform them. Rest assured I’m sticking with my feed and hope to see it back to its usual self one day.
posted by Nell on 7-16-2008 at 11:50 am
This sucks, but I can endure it for the greater good. Mental_floss is the cat’s pajamas.
posted by Ed on 7-16-2008 at 11:51 am
I hate people who fuck with other sites. Try to visit my site right now on FF3 and you’ll be told I’m distributing malware because, guess what, I was!
I don’t mind the short feed so much, since if I don’t want to read it I don’t have to wait for the full page to load, and on an edge iphone that helps.
posted by Drew Lanning on 7-16-2008 at 11:52 am
There are many blogs that are suffering from content dupers, the most recent I’ve become familiar with is Calculated Risk. I am extremely disappointed when I can’t read entire blog posts in Google Reader, but I understand why the steps in restricting the RSS are taken.
posted by Peter on 7-16-2008 at 11:54 am
Nell, I think it deserves to be mentioned that “Google’s behavior” is the result of computer algorithms. Sometimes the good stuff gets taken out with the bad, but it’s the fault of just random chance.
posted by Peter on 7-16-2008 at 11:56 am
We’ve already received several helpful emails from readers offering advice, plugins, etc. Thanks, everybody! We’ll get this figured out.
posted by Jason English on 7-16-2008 at 11:58 am
I was going to send my hate-letter as well, but reading the reasons why this happened I’ll reconsider… It probably won’t have any explosives in it.
Hope you can fix it soon!
posted by Mariano on 7-16-2008 at 11:59 am
Ah, I was wondering what was going on! I use the Better GReader plugin for Firefox so all I have to do is click through within the reader - no big deal :) I hope you get reinstated quickly!
posted by Nora on 7-16-2008 at 12:00 pm
I rescind my previous complaints. Being blacklisted by Google is mucho badness. I hope to see full RSS back soon!
posted by Eli on 7-16-2008 at 12:00 pm
Well, I’m still getting the Full (well ok half) Monty via my Google Reader. I get the headline and the first few lines of your articles.
posted by c.a. Marks on 7-16-2008 at 12:02 pm
ask.com has a better web search anyway.
posted by m on 7-16-2008 at 12:04 pm
yep, I knew something was up…my routine got thrown off. The world was a little off kilter, until I clicked to go DIRECTLY to your site.
I’ll recover.
posted by Emily on 7-16-2008 at 12:05 pm
making Only teasers in RSS is fully acceptable, but one thing, do it properly ;-) for now they are compleatly messed up - you can see inside this rss feed parts of css etc. Please do something with it… ;-)
posted by antygon on 7-16-2008 at 12:12 pm
Thanks for the explanation!!
Love the blog…best thing I read all day
posted by tripllle on 7-16-2008 at 12:16 pm
Any chance you might share these tips / tricks / plugins, for future webmasters who run into the same problems?
posted by Matthew Gallant on 7-16-2008 at 12:16 pm
Hmm - for what it’s worth, I have my m_f RSS feed scrolling at the bottom of Firefox (add-in called “RSS Ticker”) and I hadn’t noticed a difference the last little bit. The ticker just has a teaser, anyhow, and I click if I want to see the full item.
Is it just me, or does reCaptcha double as a band-name generator? Mine currently is Prosperity 25…
posted by Roger on 7-16-2008 at 12:20 pm
Thanks for letting us know. I’m glad that it isn’t a pageclick-counting deal, but disappointed that dupers are making my RSS-reading less efficient. Why do they have to ruin it for the rest of us? Do they really think they will make money by republishing other people’s stuff? I don’t get it.
posted by Andrej on 7-16-2008 at 12:50 pm
I do love me a full RSS feed. But I also love me some Mental Floss tee shirts, so I’m hoping you get reinstated and my contribution helps your cause.
posted by Noelle on 7-16-2008 at 1:21 pm
Speaking of RSS feeds, I have recently become interested in these wonderous creatures, but I admit I am confused. There are so many different kinds and how to utilize them to be more efficient/happy/etc. Given the current disturbing news and what I imagine (or hope) may be a shared confusion on the who/why/whats of RSS feeds, I recommend a mental floss piece about them - history, how to be more efficient with them, full text vs teaser…just a thought…
posted by Soph on 7-16-2008 at 1:59 pm
Andrej- I COMPLETELY agree. It’s the same reason I don’t understand people sending out viruses… do they profit from that or what? So weird!
Also I agree- I think an article on RSS stuff would be great… I have a dog-blog and read about 50 other dog-blogs and using Google Reader has REALLY helped me keep up with them, however blurbs aren’t a problem through Google Reader because you can click through to either the article or the blog itself. Do not all readers let you do that? I would post my FABULOUS dog blog but unfortunately last time I did I got lots of horrible messages from some loser… thanks commenters. URG.
posted by Kelly J on 7-16-2008 at 2:17 pm
“however blurbs aren’t a problem through Google Reader because you can click through to either the article or the blog itself. Do not all readers let you do that?”
In response to Kelly J:
Yes, readers can click to the article on the blog itself. However, the reason why I use the Google Reader in the first place is to read the articles/blog posts all in one place and not have to be bothered by opening another window to read the full article.
Making these blogs conveniently available is probably the purpose of RSS Feeds imho.
posted by Nick on 7-16-2008 at 2:50 pm
I will no longer be able to read this from work since I can no longer use Google RSS reader. I will perpetually be behind and miss articles. I hope you get the issues resolved.
posted by james on 7-16-2008 at 2:51 pm
If you use Firefox there are few extensions that let you preview the page the rss links to inside Google Reader - it’s better than having the full article in the feed as you can see the whole page not just the text
posted by Dave on 7-16-2008 at 3:10 pm
Thanks for the explanation - sorry to hear of all the issues! I’m not too fussed either way, so no worries.
posted by Dawn on 7-16-2008 at 3:15 pm
Well, thank you very much for the explination.
posted by Mimi on 7-16-2008 at 5:53 pm
Thanks for the explanation. Like others, I can endure for the greater good, but hope that you’ll revert back to a full feed soon.
In the past when I’ve had trouble with not showing in google, it’s taken about a week to start showing up again. Sometimes re-submitting a site map helps speed things along.
posted by kellie on 7-16-2008 at 5:55 pm
I’m one of those people who really rely on full feeds in my Feed Reader, so I really appreciate the explanation. I hope you can get back to full feed soon!
Thanks to others for suggestions in their comments.
posted by Heather on 7-16-2008 at 6:03 pm
Good luck getting it all sorted out! I’m looking forward to the full feed coming back! :)
posted by ELP on 7-16-2008 at 6:06 pm
I have to say, it is sad that such a thing could happen. I hope for the best for you guys. I love your magazine and the RSS features are what got me really involved. Good luck.
posted by Victor on 7-16-2008 at 7:33 pm
Ditto - I probably wouldn’t stay subscribed if you didn’t offer full feeds (and wouldn’t have read enough on mental_floss to appreciate it). I usually don’t subscribe to feeds that aren’t complete, because it eliminates much of the reason I use a feed reader. If I wanted to read articles on your site, I’d just click over here once a day.
Glad to hear this isn’t a pageview issue, that’s much of the reason behind many switches away from full feeds. Hope you get the issue sorted out soon!
posted by Mike on 7-16-2008 at 9:12 pm
With or without a full RSS feed I will stick with you guys. I can’t blame it on Google as much as the scum out there that rips off content from other sites.
posted by eric mcwilliams on 7-16-2008 at 10:28 pm
It looks like you are still posting some of the articles in full form. Is there any way you can make this consistent from day-to-day? For example, it would be nice to see the quiz/brain teasers and the links posts in full.
posted by Morgan on 7-16-2008 at 11:30 pm
I’m sad that you had to turn down the spigot. But you got to do what you got to do. I can hope that the full feed comes back. Until then your feed is too good to avoid and expect an increase in traffic on your homepage.
A question for you. I love zinio and hate wasted trees, but for mental_floss I’d be willing to subscribe to which ever is more profitable to you. So which is it, do you benefit more from tree killing paper versions or the potentially more friendly digital version?
posted by Rob F on 7-17-2008 at 12:22 am
Thanks for the explanation. I noticed that I couldn’t find Mental Floss through Google, but it happened to be the first time that I had looked for this site on Google, so, while I thought it was odd, I thought it was somehow normal. And I noticed the RSS thing, and was annoyed, but I figured I would just have to deal with it.
Nice to know it’s only temporary though!
posted by Michigan Mom on 7-17-2008 at 8:20 am
being an rss almost exclusively to consume my internet it’s disappointing, but understandable. on a side note, just got my first issue in the mail and love it. i had been a daily blog reader for the past half a year or so, and finally wanted to see what else i was missing. great stuff is what is what i was missing.
posted by George on 7-17-2008 at 11:36 am
I think the best solution for all parties is to offer a partial feed. Actually on longer articles, I’d appreciate it! The two-sentence cut off blurb you have now is frustrating to read, but the full feed you used you have could be at times, too.
I’m sure you’d like click-throughs so you can get ad revenue but us RSS readers want an enjoyable feed experience. So I think a compromise would help us both.
Either do a real teaser or a abbreviated post. A good example of a teaser RSS feed is Ars Technica. They write succinct a two line blurb written explicitly for the RSS feed, and not just pulling the first 300 characters of the post. For articles I’m interested in, I almost always click through. On the flip side, if it’s an article I’m not interested in, it’s easy to tell right off the bat.
Core77 is a site with nice abbreviated feeds and a clear jump/fold point. They almost always have a picture to draw people in and a paragraph or so. The text almost always stops at the end of a paragraph (as opposed to mid-sentence or mid-word) but there’s always a jump with more content on the click-through. So you get the meat in the RSS feed and the potatoes with the click through. Plus the feeds tend to be of an ordered length so it makes for efficient reading. But it’s not so much content that people would (probably) gank their content.
I think the Core77 model is the best for RSS feeds. But I’d be happy with dedicated teaser RSS feeds like Ars if you’re concerned about comment snatchers. .
But that’s just one RSS _floss reader’s opinion. :)
Good luck getting back on Google.
Cheers.
posted by spavis on 7-17-2008 at 12:11 pm
I prefer the abbreviated entries. They are a lot easier to browse in my RSS reader. I don’t really like having to scroll down a page or two for topics in which I’m not interested.
posted by Chad Cloman on 7-20-2008 at 3:03 pm
I’m surprised that there aren’t more RSS readers. Who actually goes to blogs anymore?
I do actually prefer the truncated posts, as I can easily pick which ones I want to read (save for later) that way. It doesn’t really bother me either way.
posted by Mandy on 7-21-2008 at 2:10 am
It’s unclear whether my first comment got through, so I’ll try to summarize. The reason that Mental Floss was gone from Google’s index was because we believed that the site had been hacked. We tried to send you an email to that effect on July 7th to let you know that because of the hacked content on Mental Floss, we were temporarily removing the site from Google.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with RSS full-text feeds. I happily use full-text feeds on my personal blog, for example, and recommend that others feel free to do the same.
posted by Matt Cutts on 7-21-2008 at 3:57 pm
Great! Problem solved. Can I have my full feed back now?
posted by Gail on 7-21-2008 at 10:15 pm