Looking for a personal content aggregator?
Sometimes using analytics tools on this blog (Awstats, Google Analytics, Measure Map), I discover that some small on the run made posts generate a lot of traffic by being on first page on Google for certain keywords.
When this is the case I add more infos in order to make them more usefull and enhace others search experience.
Considering that this post is curently no.1 for “personal content aggregator” here is a round up of the services I am aware:
1. Suprglu
This is the first service I tried and I really like it. Here is my aggregator and the reasons I like it are:
- Custom Templates / Template Customization
- Multiple sources. It has a default of popular sources but you can also add any service that has an RSS feed
- Global Tag Cloud
- Comments on each entry
- Clean Links to the user content (doesn’t use “nofollow” or any other techniques )
- Global RSS feed
- Update:Now it counts as backlink in technorati rank
Dislikes:
- Slow reaction time
- Template customization doesn’t allow advertising insertion. Somehow understandable, if they would then setting up a splog would be a piece a cake for any wanna be outhere
Aditional infos:
2. People Feeds
Mentioned by Bosko in a comment to the original post, People Feeds is a an overall good service. Here is my page and why I like the service:
- Global page for all content and sections for general services (photos, bookmarks, blogs, others)
- Global and section tag clouds
- Global and section RSS feed
- Clean Links to the user content (doesn’t use “nofollow” or any other techniques )
- Good reaction time
- Blog Tools – like global search script
Dislikes:
- No templates
- Rough avatar handling
- If a custom feed is not automatically asigned to a category it goes to others section without the posibility to change that. For example I cannot put my 360 page in blogs
- No password recovery (that one really sucks)
- No user advertisment allowed
Additional resources:
3. Yahoo 360
Not a real personal content aggregator but has some basic functions:
- Flickr badge
- Yahoo photos
- Up to 3 custom feeds
Dislikes:
- No global RSS feed
- Doesn’t allow other Yahoo services (movies, myweb and so on) but they seem to be working on that
- No tag cloud
- No SEF URLs
Additional resources:
4. Feedburner
Again another not real personal content aggregator but allows integration of multiple feeds under a single one
Using personal content aggregators for SEO purposes
Everyone that has done SEO knows that links coming from same theme sites are more valuable than random ones. Using the power of custom content aggregators, you can setup in a few minutes thematic sites and include your target site among the feeds (or in the template – like on SuprGlu – a few targeted links). This is somehow a gray SEO technique and depending on it’s (ab)use can be moral or imoral. But this is up to each individual
I tried Suprglu and liked it but, after some time using it, decided that the focus was on profile layout, appearence, and so on. The fact is though that most people who generate content across various different web edge services (like del.icio.us, Flickr, and so on) use their blog as _the_ primary way to publish and cross-promote all of the stuff they generate (for example, you expose your del.icio.us tag cloud on this very blog).
Finally, I decided to build a personal content aggregator myself for me and people I cared about. I wanted it to be easy, simple, obvious. I just made it public at peoplefeeds.com and would appreciate your comments. The key highlights:
- Allows you to really claim your services by authenticating to them (if you wish) and categorizes your entries: bookmarks, blog, photos, other.
- Brings in all the entry tags it can find.
- You can remix everything, within categories, and globally, and by tag, AND everything, absolutely everything, is available in RSS.
- Whatever is available in RSS can also be added to your personal watchlist. You can download your watchlist in OPML. The OPML is hierarchical and clean so it imports really neatly into Newsgator. Bloglines is not as clever as Newsgator when it comes to deeper hierarchies in OPML, so I’ll have to provide a “flatter” OPML of the watchlist for Bloglines users eventually too.
- You can post your unified tagcloud _on your blog_, where it belongs, only directing users to your profile if they click on tags.
- The core idea is relating aggregated data to users who own it (i.e., responsible personal content aggregation) and the ability to remix and re-export everything.
Cheers,
Bosko.
I’ve spotten many of our clients are using feeddigest.com.
Check my quick review: here.
I did a small test by brining my blog feed on my picture site