How is Yahoo using your RSS feed?

[rfuess]

The format for the site submission has changed in the freeYahoo web submissions. At first it allowed you to submit your site to it using the free submission form.

More recently it allowed you to put in a text document with a list of URL's to simplify the submission process.

A few weeks ago I noticed that it also allows RSS feeds of your website, Atom feeds, or a text listing of urls. What does this mean?

I have been working with Google Sitemaps since they came out. (Google uses their Google Sitemaps to find all the pages in a website, as well as to evaluate what pages have changed recently.) I am wondering if this is Yahoo's response to the Google Site Maps. Does anyone know?

If I was them, then I would use RSS feeds to evaluate changes in the website. They have all the right information. If this is the case, it would be advisable for webmasters to have a RSS feed for their whole site to submit. That way Yahoo could just check the feed and know what pages to re-crawl, or what pages have been added.

It could be just as possible that this is just a field for us to submit RSS feeds, in addition to the other pages in your website. If this is the case, then we may need to submit both the feed and the home page of the website.

For myself, unless I find out differently, I am going to submit both. I intend on having a Google Sitemap and a RSS feed on all my future websites. I think it is safest to help out the search engines in any way possible. If they want information on what files have changed, I want to be proactive in giving it to them.