Data Feeds Guide

Data feeds are some standards that allow data to be offered and updated over the web. There are many data feed options and we will go through these to see the advantages and disadvantages of each data style and implementation.

Among the main format of data feeds widely used over the Internet are iframes, RSS, XML and CSV. Data feeds are provided by many online businesses and websites, and from an affiliate perspective the data feeds allow implementation and update of huge amounts of data.

Below we have set the main pros and cons on using each type of data feed:

Pros

Cons

iFrames: data feeds & widgets

 

 Iframes are maybe the simplest ways of integrating data on your website. What an iframe basically does is simulates a web browser within your page and loads the content from a source URL. Because content loads as a page from another website, iframes provide little to no customization. Besides that, not many websites provide custom iframe widgets that other webmaster can take on and implement. A custom iframe widget should provide content with little branding and a simplistic view – you do not want to load the entire source website with logo and full menus.

Iframe widgets are a quick way to provide your users with fresh content loaded from other websites, so this improves your website’s visitors experience. The downsize would be that iframe content does not offer any SEO value as search engines see that data is loaded from other website.

Because iFrame widgets are easy to implement, these are fairly popular among all sort of webmasters.

Example iframe widgets

RSS: data feeds & widgets

  

RSS or short for Really Simple Syndication are another type of data feed. RSS are largely popular among websites and blogs, and mainly provide readers with a quicker way to access and read content from their favorite sources. The less used side of RSS feeds is website implementation. Yet this sort of integration is among the easiest and provides the most benefits compared with the work required for implementation. Just like in the case of iframe widgets, RSS provided automated updated content.

The best advantage on RSS integration is the SEO value it provides: in the case of RSS data integration, search engines see the content as originating from your web-page, and we all know how much search engines love fresh content. While fresh content is true, there may come the problem of duplicate content – and this is a reason we would recommend the amount of data provided through RSS integration to be limited to titles or preview content, and ideally also wrap it up on the page around your own unique content.

RSS data integration may have limited customization, but it fits well into your website style, a reason more that it will show as your own content and that you have probably came across such implementations on many other websites without realizing it.

Example RSS implementation

CSV: data feed files

 

CSV are data files formatted to include large amounts of data in the least amount of space. These files can be easily be previewed and edited with Microsoft Office Excel or the OpenOffice Calc programs. When previewed with these programs, the CSV file will show the data organized in columns and rows. From an affiliate point of view, CSV files are highly used to provide large amounts of data such as product lists with description and prices, hotel lists with address, description as few examples.

CSV files offer row data that needs to be formatted when implemented on a website, and this may require some development work and maintenance together with better server resources – reason for not being used by so many webmasters. But based on the platform your web project is used, you may be able to find some options that can help you integrate data from CSV files without development knowledge.

Saving the data on your end and loading it on your website in a custom way provides good SEO value and good user experience as you are in control of how you show the imported content.

XML: data feeds

 

XML data feeds are another popular method of distributing and updating large amounts of data. At the same time it requires the most resources from a hosting point of view, development work and possible maintenance costs. Due to these costs and work, implementation and use of XML data feeds seem limited to businesses / affiliates with better cash flow.

While XML implementation may be the most complicated data feed implementation it comes with many benefits as well, like good SEO value, highly customisable way of showing data in your content, quick data updates, highly structured data.

Who does provide XML data feeds? There is a vast area of use, but as few examples you can find XML data feeds provided by with hotel data, with betting odds data, sports scores and statistics and many more.

Conclusion

Bottom line, our favorite feed integration from the list of above examples is the RSS – it is easy to implement without development knowledge and provides the most benefits like updated content all the time, a good SEO value on your website and good fit in your website styling.