4 Easy Ways of Subscribing to Feeds in Google Reader

Google Reader is a very popular online tool for reading RSS feeds. As a result, the number of ways to get a new feed in to Google Reader has multiplied. In this article we will take a look at a few easy ways to subscribe to a new RSS feed.

Use the Add Subscription Button

If you are just getting started with Google Reader, and you don’t have any specific feeds in mind to add, using the built-in add subscription button is going to be your first stop. This is actually two buttons in one.

Add subscription will take any a keyword, feed name, feed URL or web page URL and attempt to parse it to find the feed you want. Depending on how precise you are, the faster you will be subscribed. If you put in a vague query like giraffes or sunset, it will perform a modified Google search to find the most likely feed for you to subscribe to. If you put in the name of a blog, say for example google tutor, if it finds a feed with exactly that name you will be subscribed automatically (read more here). And finally, if you put in a site URL or feed URL, it will add the correct feed for you.

Discover is a little tool that works in two ways:

• Recommendations Tab: Google Reader analyzes your existing feeds and makes suggestions for feeds you might like, based on a number of parameters.
• Browse Tab: This is actually a group of different ways to get started quickly. The Google Reader folks have created “bundles” of feeds for you to subscribe to, you can add a friend’s feed from one of the most popular blogging platforms like Blogger or Livejournal, or you can simply type in a keyword to get a list of feeds.

Use Your Browser

Several modern browsers have support for automatically detecting if there is a feed on the web page you are looking at, and if there is, adding it to either their built-in RSS reader or alternatively to an external reader, including Google Reader. You can see an example of this in the picture. Firefox makes it very easy, as does Opera. Safari prefers to use its own built-in reader, so you will have to first bring up the feed and then cut and paste it over in the “add subscription” box above. With Internet Explorer, it depends on which version you use.. IE 6 has absolutely no support for built-in feeds, but IE 7 does.

Use A Bookmarklet

A bookmarklet is a tiny program (written in javascript) that fits inside a bookmark.  The Official Google Reader Blog has a couple of really nice bookmarklets you can use while you web-surf.  The first one works like a charm in most browser, and the second one lets you copy sections of web pages (even if they don’t have an RSS feed!) and share them with your friends in Google Reader. The 2nd bookmarklet can also be found on the Notes link within Google Reader.

Advanced Bookmarklet: If you are looking for a way to add a social aspect to feed sharing, check out Toluu. It supports recommended feeds as well as its own bookmarklet for adding feeds to Google Reader from pretty much any browser.

Use a Web Site’s Add Our Feed Button

A lot of web sites will prominently display a link to their feed.  Often, that link will take you to a FeedBurner page, which they refer to as their BrowserFriendly page.  You can click the thumbnail below for a better view.

As you can see, there are little subscribe widgets near the top of the page that allow you to choose which application to invoke to add your subscription.  Once you have chosen one, FeedBurner remembers this for next time.. so it will default to that choice the next time.

Final Thought

To wrap up, you should always search Google’s help page if you want to find more information about their products.  This is no different for Google Reader, which has a great FAQ page that will answer a lot of your questions.