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Help People Subscribe to Your Content
You can promote your feed by placing an "Add to Google" button to your website. This will make it easy for people to quickly add your feed right to their Google homepage or Google Reader.
You can also use the "Add to Google" button to promote a Homepage API module you've created.
If your content is a feed
If your content is a module
| Frequently Asked Questions |
- Why would I want to place an "Add to Google" button on my site?
- How do I add a button to my site?
- How do I know the button works?
- What are feeds?
- What are modules? How do I create one?
- How do I create a feed for my site?
- How do I add a thumbnail to my feed?
- What feed formats are supported?
- I still have questions. Where can I get more help?
1. Why would I want to place an "Add to Google" button on my site?
The "Add to Google" button makes it easier for people to discover your feed or module. The button helps you promote your site by making it easy for readers to quickly add content right to their Google homepage or Google Reader.
2. How do I add a button to my site?
Use the form above to create the HTML for your site. Be sure to go to the right section for either your feed or Homepage API module. Simply enter the URL for your feed or module, click "Create HTML" and copy and paste the resulting text onto your website.
3. How do I know the button works?
Once you've placed an "Add to Google" button to your site, you can test it out by simply clicking on it and going through the process. You'll know it worked if your content is successfully added to your Google homepage or Google Reader.
4. What are feeds?
If you have a frequently updated website, such as a blog or news publication, you can use a feed to help people stay up-to-date with your site. A feed is a specially formatted version of the content on your website. Feeds are machine-readable, which means that users' feed readers and aggregators can automatically show them your latest content and alert them whenever updates appear.
5. What are modules? How do I create one?
The Homepage API is a way to create rich modules with a greater functionality than a feed. Use it to turn your web content or application into modules that users can add to their Google homepage. You can also develop features that affect other aspects of the page, such as font and color schemes. The Homepage API doesn't require any downloads, and was designed to be flexible and easy to use.
6. How do I create a feed for my site?
Most blog hosting services make it easy to create a feed. Check those sites' help content
for more information (e.g.,
Blogger,
LiveJournal, or
Typepad).
You can also create custom feeds using
Google News and
Google Groups.
If you host your own website, there are a number of resources on the web to help you get started
creating feeds, such as this guide by Danny Sullivan.
7. How do I
add a thumbnail to my feed?
Most of the modules displayed in the
Google
Directory have thumbnails associated with
them that illustrate what the module does. You
can specify a thumbnail in your feed. The suggested
dimensions for thumbnails are 120 pixels wide by
60 pixels high. Google downloads this image, scales
it to 120x60, adds padding as necessary, and for
performance and reliability, re-hosts the image
on a google.com server.
The syntax can vary depending on the
type of feed format you are using. Here is
an example of how you might include thumbnail
information in an RSS feed:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rss version="0.92">
<channel>
<!-- The title is used in various places in the directory and Personalized Homepage
to help users. Please keep the title as short as possible. -->
<title>Test Feed</title>
<!-- The link is used in the Personalized Homepage title-bar, to link to your site -->
<link>http://www.google.com/</link>
<!-- The description is used in the detail page about your feed -->
<description>A nice long description of your feed.</description>
<!-- ... other channel sub-elements may go here, e.g. ttl ... -->
<image>
<url>http://www.google.com/ig/modules/sticky-thm.png</url>
<!-- ... other image sub-elements may go here, e.g. width ... -->
</image>
<item>
<title>RSS Item title #1</title>
<link>http://www.google.com/</link>
<!-- ... other item sub-elements may go here, e.g. description ... -->
</item>
<!-- ... more items ... -->
</channel>
</rss>
Here is an example for Atom:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<?xml-stylesheet href="http://www.blogger.com/styles/atom.css"
type="text/css"?>
<feed xmlns="http://purl.org/atom/ns#" version="0.3" xml:lang="en-US">
<title mode="escaped" type="text/html">Test feed</title>
<tagline mode="escaped" type="text/html">A nice long description of your feed.</tagline>
<logo>http://www.google.com/ig/modules/sticky-thm.png</logo>
<!-- other feed sub-elements, including id, links, etc. -->
<entry xmlns="http://purl.org/atom/ns#">
<!-- ...item elements... -->
</entry>
<!-- ...other items... -->
</feed>
8. What feed formats are supported?
There are a number of popular feed formats out there. We currently
support
Atom (0.3 and 1.0) and
RSS (0.91,
0.92, 1.0, and 2.0).
9. I still have questions. Where can I get more help?
If you have additional questions or need help placing an "Add to Google"
button to your page, please contact us.
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