Make Google Reader feeds more specific?

March 20, 2011 9:24 AM

Google Reader: Is there a way to have Google Reader only follow specific kinds of posts in a given blog?

There are a few blogs that I follow on Google Reader where I'm only really interested in posts with a given tag. For example, say I want to follow this Study Hacks blog, but I'm only interested in the posts tagged with "Life after college", which are archived here. Is there a way to make only those posts show up in my Google Reader? Pasting in the url for that specific tag doesn't seem to work (i.e., it does the same thing as if I'd pasted in the general url for the blog).

Thanks!

posted by sparrow89 to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Best answer: Here's a feed of for just that category:

http://calnewport.com/blog/category/features-life-after-college/feed/

Not all blogs have this feature. You can often discover it by searching in Google Reader, or by visiting the category page and looking for a feed link or clicking the "subscribe" button in your browser.
posted by mbrubeck at 9:25 AM on March 20, 2011

Best answer: For any weblog that is using Wordpress as a CMS, you can subscibe to any specific category in use there. By, indeed, using the URL ..../category/*****/feed/
posted by ijsbrand at 10:35 AM on March 20, 2011

WCityMike is right -- it takes a little doing (and who knows whether it'll be around a year from now), but Yahoo Pipes can do exactly what you're looking for, with a little work.
posted by LairBob at 12:30 PM on March 20, 2011

It's not Google Reader. but NewsBlur has an intelligence trainer that will do exactly what you're describing, and more. The free version is limited in number of feeds supported, though.
posted by jeffrygardner at 9:42 PM on March 20, 2011

Response by poster: Thanks all! I think I'll stick with Google Reader for now but I appreciate all of the suggestions.
posted by sparrow89 at 9:28 AM on March 23, 2011