This has lead to what I consider improper use of RSS feeds to spam search engines, this seems to be aimed particularly at Google. Although not yet widespread yet many webmasters are cottoning on to fact that they can get easy content for their websites without putting in much effort. Although off hand this may not seem detrimental to you, consider long term consequences. Your feed copied hundreds if not thousands of times and no back links to your site as links have been stripped. What if Google decides to penalise due to duplicate content, consequences could be that your site is dropped from Googles listings.

After considering such a scenario I have come up with a few suggestions. Firstly only publish a teaser paragraph in your feed that links back to main article. Although some may disagree with me as they prefer full article in feed, I truly believe RSS is better suited to notification type messages. Secondly you can publish some terms in your feed which states that contents are personal use only and you should be contacted for syndication rights. While this will not stop those determined to copy content of your RSS feed it will help raise awareness of issue.

There is one final point before we finish and it is something optional you may wish to choose. You may wish to keep your existing feed address if you have existing subscribers and to future proof your feed. To do this you will need to use an HTTP redirect in your htaccess file. If this means nothing to you I would suggest further research before doing this.

You will need to add a new line to your htaccess file.

redirect temp /rssfeed.xml http://feeds.feedburner.com/feedburnerFeed

You will need to change /rssfeed.xml to name of your current feed and Feedburner path to new feed address you will be given by Feedburner. You will need to point Feedburner to a copy of your feed that only Feedburner will see. You will then offer /rssfeed.xml feed address you created in your htaccess file to you visitors to subscribe to your feed.

This is how it should work. Feedburner will periodically check your address you gave to Feedburner for new posts. Your visitors will subscribe using address you used in your htaccess file and get redirected to feed that Feedburner has created for you. This will mean that in future if you wish to stop using Feedburner service all you need to do is remove line from your htaccess file and your readers will not notice any difference.