How to Manage RSS Subscriptions on Google Reader

Google Reader is a web-based news aggregator, which enables you to read RSS feeds from various websites on one single browser. It is one of the most popular web-based aggregators out there, and this popularity is justified by the relative simplicity and ease of use. Read on to lean how to manage your RSS subscriptions on Google Reader.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Log into your Google Reader account. When you do this the first time, you will be prompted with the option to add subscriptions. Google Reader provides a variety of pre-packaged bundles with categories like News, Sports, Fun and the like. Click “Subscribe” on one or more of the options, and you will start getting feeds from various websites under those categories.

2. Use Google Reader's Search function to browse for and add specific RSS subscriptions.

3. Let Google Reader automatically locate the URL for an RSS feed you want, if you don't know its web address. Simply click on “Add Subscription” from the left hand panel, and Google Reader will automatically locate the RSS feed's URL, and then subscribe you to it.

4. View all your feeds, by clicking on “All Feeds” from the left hand panel. You can also select packages like News from the same panel, or click on particular feeds and view them from under these categories.

5. Click on “Show: updated” or “Show: all” from the left hand panel in your browser, if you only want to view updated feeds or all feeds.

6. Click on “Manage Subscriptions” at the bottom of the left hand panel on your browser, to manage individual subscriptions. Here, you can rename your subscriptions, change the folders in which they appear, and unsubscribe from them.

7. Share your subscriptions by clicking on the “Start Sharing” tab. This will enable you give your friends and family access to view your subscriptions.

8. Discover new sites that may be of interest by clicking on “Discover.” You will find this option next to the “Add Subscription” link in the left hand side panel. This will bring up a list of subscriptions that other Google Reader users are subscribed to. Review the list and you can choose to subscribe to one or more simply by clicking on “Subscribe.”

Tips & Warnings

• If you are a regular visitor of "Blogger," "Flickr" or "MySpace," you can simply enter the username of all your friends on these sites and get updates from them on Google Reader.