RSS/Atom/JSON Feed Discovery: a beginner's guide
Discover RSS, Atom, and JSON feeds with WebSub detection
Feeds (RSS, JSON, Atom): the syndication format that quietly powers AI and aggregators
A feed is a structured, machine-readable list of the most recent content on a website — usually the latest blog posts, articles, episodes, or releases. The three formats you will encounter are RSS (Really Simple Syndication, around since 1999), Atom (a cleaner XML successor introduced in 2005), and JSON Feed (a modern JSON-formatted version introduced in 2017). Functionally, all three do the same thing: they hand any program that asks a clean list of "here is what is new on this website," so the program can subscribe and fetch updates without scraping HTML.
You should care because feeds are quietly more important in 2025 than they were in 2015, even though most non-technical people assume RSS is dead. Podcast apps still depend entirely on RSS — every podcast you have ever listened to, in any app, is delivered through an RSS feed. AI summarizers (Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity) increasingly read feeds to keep their information current. News aggregators, internal company dashboards, syndication platforms, and even some search engines treat feeds as the canonical "latest content from this site" source. A site without a feed is a site that is invisible to all of these channels.
The five things every feed audit looks at:
Does a feed exist at all? The standard locations to check are `/feed`, `/rss`, `/feed.xml`, `/rss.xml`, `/atom.xml`, and `/feed.json`. Most modern blog platforms expose at least one of these automatically.
Is the feed referenced from the HTML `<head>`? The `<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">` tag is how aggregators auto-discover the feed.
Does the feed actually validate? Malformed XML or JSON can break consumer software in subtle ways. The standard validators are the W3C Feed Validation Service for RSS and Atom.
Does the feed contain meaningful content? Some feeds publish only headlines and short excerpts; others publish the full article body. The right answer depends on your strategy (full feeds are more friendly to readers but less friendly to ad-supported business models).
Is the feed kept current? A feed that stopped updating six months ago is worse than no feed at all — it tells aggregators that the site is abandoned.
Three questions a feed audit answers:
Is my content discoverable by the AI summarizers and aggregators that increasingly use feeds as their input?
If I run a podcast, is my RSS feed valid and up to date in every detail that podcast apps require?
Did my last theme update accidentally break feed auto-discovery from my homepage?
The cost of skipping feeds is invisibility in a growing set of AI-driven and aggregator-driven channels. The cost of adding one is essentially zero on any modern blog platform. This is one of the cheapest ways to extend the reach of your content into channels you may not even realize exist.
The RSS/Atom/JSON Feed Discovery endpoint, in plain language
In one sentence: Discover RSS, Atom, and JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) feeds with WebSub detection
Discovers RSS 2.0, Atom, and JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) Feed endpoints on a website using a two-phase approach: first parsing HTML (HyperText Markup Language) <link rel="alternate"> autodiscovery tags (per the RSS Board specification), then probing 11 common feed paths used by popular CMS (Content Management System) platforms (WordPress, Hugo, Jekyll, Ghost). Also detects WebSub (W3C Recommendation) hub endpoints for real-time subscription support. Returns feed URLs, format types, titles, and actionable recommendations for improving feed implementation.
Don't worry if some of the words above are still unfamiliar — there's a plain-language glossary at the bottom of this page, and most of the terms link to their own beginner guides if you want to learn more.
What is actually happening when you call it
Here's what's actually happening behind the scenes when you call this endpoint:
Phase 1: Parses the HTML (HyperText Markup Language) <head> section for <link rel="alternate"> tags with RSS (application/rss+xml), Atom (application/atom+xml), and JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) Feed (application/feed+json) MIME types. Phase 2: Probes common feed paths (/feed, /rss, /rss.xml, /feed.xml, /atom.xml, /index.xml, /blog/feed, /feed.json) via HEAD requests and validates responses by content type. Also extracts WebSub hub links for real-time push notification support.
If you're using an AI assistant through MCP, you don't need to understand any of the technical details — the assistant calls the tool and translates the result for you.
Why this specific tool matters
Let's skip the marketing fluff and answer the only question that actually matters: why should you, a real human with a real to-do list, care about the RSS/Atom/JSON Feed Discovery tool? Here's the plain-English version, written the way you'd hear it from a friend who happens to do this for a living.
RSS/Atom feeds remain the backbone of content syndication, powering news aggregators, podcast directories, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) monitoring tools, and automated content pipelines. Over 60% of the top 10K websites still maintain RSS feeds. Automated feed discovery is essential for building aggregation platforms, monitoring competitor content strategies, auditing SEO syndication readiness, and integrating real-time content updates via WebSub.
Picture this in real life. Imagine an SEO specialist. Here's the situation they're walking into: Audit whether a website properly exposes RSS/Atom feeds via autodiscovery link tags, checks for JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) Feed support, and implements WebSub for real-time indexing. Identify missing feed formats that could improve content distribution to Google News, Apple News, and other aggregators. Without the right tool, that person would be stuck copy-pasting between five browser tabs, reading documentation written for engineers, and crossing their fingers that the answer they cobble together is correct. With the RSS/Atom/JSON Feed Discovery tool, the same person gets a clear answer in seconds — no spreadsheets, no guessing, no waiting for someone on the infrastructure team to free up.
Three questions this tool answers in plain English. If any of these have ever crossed your mind, the RSS/Atom/JSON Feed Discovery tool is built for you:
Are search engines actually able to crawl, understand, and recommend my pages?
What is the single biggest fix I could make today to climb in Google?
How does my site compare against the technical SEO checklist that the top results all pass?
You can either click the tool and get the answer yourself, or ask your AI assistant — connected through MCP (Model Context Protocol) — to ask the question for you and translate the answer into something you can paste into Slack.
Who gets the most out of this. Marketers, content writers, freelancers running client sites, founders trying to grow without paying for ads, and SEO specialists running monthly health checks. If you see yourself in that list, this is one of the EdgeDNS tools you should bookmark today.
What happens if you skip this entirely. Skip it and search engines quietly stop sending you traffic and you don't find out until the next quarterly review. That's why running this check — even once a month — is one of the cheapest forms of insurance you can give your domain.
Available on the free plan. The technical details: `GET /v1/domain/feeds`.
When would I actually use this?
If you're still on the fence about whether the RSS/Atom/JSON Feed Discovery tool belongs in your toolbox, this section is for you. Below you'll meet three real people — an SEO specialist, a content strategist, and a developer — facing three real situations where this tool turns a stressful afternoon into a five-minute task. Read whichever story sounds closest to your week.
Story 1: SEO Content Syndication Audit
Imagine you're an SEO specialist. Audit whether a website properly exposes RSS/Atom feeds via autodiscovery link tags, checks for JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) Feed support, and implements WebSub for real-time indexing. Identify missing feed formats that could improve content distribution to Google News, Apple News, and other aggregators.
Why it matters: Improve content discoverability and syndication reach by identifying and fixing feed implementation gaps.
Story 2: Competitive Content Monitoring
Imagine you're a content strategist. Discover competitor RSS/Atom feeds from your own code or AI assistant to set up automated monitoring of publishing cadence, content themes, and product announcements. Use feed metadata to understand update frequency and content volume.
Why it matters: Build automated competitive intelligence pipelines that track competitor content output in real time.
Story 3: Feed Aggregator Integration
Imagine you're a developer. from your own code or AI assistant discover feed URLs for thousands of websites when building news aggregators, podcast directories, or content curation platforms. Detect feed format (RSS vs Atom vs JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) Feed) and WebSub hub availability to optimize subscription strategy.
Why it matters: Automate feed URL (web address) discovery at scale, eliminating manual configuration for content aggregation platforms.
Common situations across teams. Beyond the three stories above, here are the everyday workplace moments when people across the company reach for the RSS/Atom/JSON Feed Discovery tool — or one of the tools right next to it in this category. If any of these are on your calendar this month, that's your sign:
Before launching a new page, site, or campaign — to catch the dumb mistakes.
During a quarterly SEO health check.
When organic traffic suddenly drops and you need to find out why.
When pitching a new client and you need an audit deck in under an hour.
If you can see yourself in even one of those bullets, the RSS/Atom/JSON Feed Discovery tool will pay for itself the first time you use it.
Still not sure? Here's the easiest test in the world. Open Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or any other AI assistant connected to the EdgeDNS MCP server and ask, in your own words: "Is the RSS/Atom/JSON Feed Discovery tool useful for my job?" The assistant will look at the tool, ask you a couple of follow-up questions about what you're trying to accomplish, and give you a straight answer in plain English. No commitment, no signup forms, no jargon.
The easiest way: just ask your AI assistant
If you've connected the EdgeDNS MCP server to Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Cursor, or any other AI assistant, you don't need to write any code. Just ask in plain English:
"Use the RSS/Atom/JSON Feed Discovery tool to check techcrunch.com and explain anything that looks wrong in plain language."
The AI will figure out which tool to call, fill in the right parameters, run it, and then explain the result back to you. No copy-pasting between tabs. No reading raw JSON. No memorizing endpoint names.
MCP (Model Context Protocol) access is free on every plan, including the free tier. One API key works for both REST and AI — you do not have to choose.
The technical way: call it from code
If you're a developer and want to call the endpoint from a script or your own application, here's the simplest possible example. Replace the placeholder API key with the real one from your dashboard.
# Replace edns_live_YOUR_KEY with your real API key from the dashboard
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer edns_live_YOUR_KEY" \
"https://api.edgedns.dev/v1/domain/feeds?domain=techcrunch.com"What you need to provide
There's just one piece of information you need to provide. The table below explains exactly what it is and what a real value looks like.
| Field | Type | Required? | What it means | Example |
|---|---|---|---|---|
domain | string | Yes | The domain to discover feeds for (e.g., techcrunch.com, blog.example.com) | techcrunch.com |
What you get back
When you call this tool, you'll get back a JSON object with the fields below. If you're talking to it through an AI assistant, the assistant reads these for you and explains them in plain language — you don't need to memorize them.
| Field | Type | What you'll see in it |
|---|---|---|
domain | string | The queried domain |
feeds | array | Discovered feeds — each with type (rss/atom/json), URL (web address), and title |
count | number | Total number of feeds discovered |
hasRss | boolean | Whether RSS 2.0 feeds were found |
hasAtom | boolean | Whether Atom feeds were found |
hasJson | boolean | Whether JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) Feed (jsonfeed.org) endpoints were found |
websubHub | string | WebSub hub URL (web address) if detected (null if none) |
score | number | Feed implementation score (0-100) |
grade | string | Letter grade (A-F) based on score |
recommendations | array | Actionable feed implementation suggestions |
Words you might be wondering about
If any words on this page felt like jargon, here's a plain-language version. Click any linked term to read a full beginner-friendly guide.
URL (web address) — The full address of a page, like https://example.com/about.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) — Everything you do to help search engines like Google find, understand, and rank your website.
CMS (Content Management System) — Software that lets non-technical people publish web pages without writing code. WordPress, Webflow, and Ghost are popular examples.
HTML (HyperText Markup Language) — The basic language web pages are written in. The tags you see in the source code (<h1>, <p>, <a>) are HTML.
JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) — A lightweight format for sending data between programs. Looks like { "name": "example", "age": 5 }. Used by basically every modern web API.
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