If an RSS Feed is Out There, It's Gada.be

Gada.be is a metasearch engine for RSS feeds that allows users to search for feeds on a topic and have them delivered to a desktop or mobile device. The name Gada.be (pronounced "gotta be") was selected because the number 4232.2233 spells out Gada.be on most handsets and requires few key presses on a 10-key keypad.

The service works by allowing search terms to be defined via subdomains. Subdomains, also known as a fully qualified domain names or canonical names, are used by many sites for various functions. Gada.be users simply type a URL instead of loading a search page, navigating to an input box and wait for a results page.

For example, users can search for RSS feeds on the phrase "emerging technologies" by typing the following into a web browser:

http://emerging.technologies.gada.be

Hyphens instead of periods are used to search emerging technologies as keywords:

http://emerging-technologies.gada.be

However, this approach was very problematic for Google, which removed Gada.be pages from their index for about three weeks in December 2005.

Since Google weighs more heavily those web sites that have a search term somewhere in the name, some web operators create junk sites (called "search engine spam" by Google). These sites contain little or no content but have various search terms sprinkled throughout their canonical names, meta tags, visible text, and elsewhere to grab some free traffic from Google and, in some cases, revenue from Google ads.

Gada.be changed their approach by converting searches into a more normal URL structure and has reappeared in Google's index. A search for emerging technologies using Gada.be's default setting results in the web browser being redirected to the following address:

http://gada.be/d/emerging-technologies

Users can use Gada.be indexed feeds integrate their own RSS aggregators. To do this users add /opml to any search address:

http://gada.be/d/emerging-technologies/opml

This produces a screenful of OPML -- Outline Processor Markup Language. OPML generates XML formatted lists so they can be used in different operating environments. The OPML text is imported into an RSS aggregator in order to get topic updates. Sphere: Related Content