5 Ways to Power Up Your Google Reader Efficiency

Google reader is one of the most elaborate RSS readers available, making it possible for you to follow many blogs without spending hours surfing the net.

However, once you’ve subscribed to 60 RSS feeds, the daily bombardment of new articles can give you a panic attack. Sorting through the articles you wouldn’t even read if you were bored to death on a deserted island, and the priceless ‘must reads’ can take hours.

Here are some strategies you can use in Google Reader to help you separate the proverbial blog-corn from the chaff:

1. Sort your feeds

OK, admit it: you do have favorites. You may subscribe to some ‘educational’ blogs, but you really love Google Tutor (*wink*). You can organize your feeds by priority, which comes in handy on busy days when there are some feeds that can be missed. It is easy to do this, by setting up tags that are basically just numbers. For example, a tag simply called “1”, “2”, etc. Needless to say, the numbers correspond to how important the feed is to you.

You can also accomplish the same by adding your top priority feeds to a folder labeled “1”.

The clear benefit of going the folder route: You can add the same blog to different folders. Here is a screenshot of a blog I added both to my “priority” folder (1), and a “blogging” folder.

Accomplish this by going into “manage subscriptions,” listed under your RSS feed list.

2. Use the Read it Later Add-on

A handy little add-on will let you browse your Google Reader feeds and check off items you want to read later. Sarah went into some detail describing this awesome tool.

If you’re excited about this added functionality, here’s where you can get your hands on it.

3. Learn the Reader Language

Use keyboard shortcuts to weave your way through Google Reader ten times faster. Some basic shortcuts are listed here:

• j/k: item down/up
• o: open/close item
• s: toggle star
• m: mark as read/unread
• t: tag an item

Some recently added shortcuts:

• a: add subscriptions
• g+d: open the feed directory
• e: email the current article

Want to move onto advanced shortcut lessons? Thomas has made a great cheat sheet to help you along.

4. Do a Monthly Cleanup

There will always be feeds you subscribed to, but never read. Thankfully, you don’t have to play a guessing game when cleaning up your subscriptions.

Google Reader has this great little thing called “Subscription Trends.” It’s like a big brother keeping track of what your read, and when you read it. Although this could turn into a scary privacy discussion, it does come in handy.

Click on “Trends”, and if you see feeds that are being read less than 5%, it’s probably not a bad idea to dump it off your list.

5. Tag your Feeds

Your feeds can be organized with tags. Aside from the option of using numbers to denote your feeds by priority, you can tag them with keywords as well for easy browsing.
If you are just looking for particular information, this is a great tool to get to those specialized feeds faster.

To add tags to a post, just click on “add tags,” and enter the relevant keywords.

These are just a few features that can help you speed-read your feeds with Google Reader. Which features make it easier for you to navigate your subscriptions in Reader?