Friday, June 3, 2011

RSS feed error in Google Webmaster Central Blog

Today when i opened up Google Reader to catch my dose of news for the day, i was surprised to see some pictures appearing in Google Webmaster Central Blog RSS feed. On clicking on one of the pictures, a website with a lot of personal pictures opened up. I wasn’t sure why Google Webmaster Central Blog RSS feed would show some personal folder. So i opened up the Google Webmaster Central Blog directly and i noticed that the blog didn’t have those pictures at all.

So i wonder whether this was an anomaly which happened with only me or were there many people like me who observed the same phenomenon. But to my surprise, a quick Google search didn’t reveal any post which reported this incident.

Conspiracy Theories

Further, i started thinking why this happened. I have listed down some theories below:

  1. The blog RSS feeds were hacked
  2. A Google employee might have inadvertently linked the images somehow to the Google Webmaster Central Blog instead of her own blog.
  3. Google Reader might have retrieved some other feed and put it in the Webmaster Central Blog feed.

Apart from the above theories, i couldn’t think of any other option as i had a long day of grey matter use which had a prohibiting effect on further brain functioning. So i leave it to the readers to suggest the possible reasons. Lets see who’s theory is the craziest of all!

Please see the below image which shows the two posts which were last updated on the Google Webmaster Central Blog: Introducing schema.org Search engines come together for a richer web and Add +1 to help your site stand out.  

Rss error in Google webmaster central blog 2

Rss feed error in Google webmaster central blog 4

And the images i was talking about, see one screenshot below, for more you can visit: www.joehewes.com. By the way if you are thinking that this is a weird way of promoting the said website, this is not. That is why i haven’t given a hyperlink. Stop thinking that i am doing this for fun!!!rss error in Google webmaster central blog 3

Is it one of the theories which i suggested? What do you think? Do you have a better explanation, then do suggest in the comments.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I got the same pictures the same way. Strange.

Anonymous said...

From Japan. Also, got same pictures. 25 pictures on 3rd June.

Vikram said...

it seems i was not alone... i guess all the feed subscribers experienced the same thing... however, no one still knows what actually happened. was the site hacked or what. lets see if google makes an announcement in the near future...

Andrea said...

Me too. HMMM!

Mr. സംഭവം (ചുള്ളൻ) said...

Even I can see em

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