While there is a bubbling universe of much smaller players who have been working at creating new search engines and directories entirely devoted to the indexing of RSS feeds none of these has enough clout, exposure and comprehensive coverage to become The reference clearinghouse to find RSS feed-based in a category-based environment.

There is no "central" place where to go and identify RSS content by category of content. I know that you can search widely on keywords and keyphrases on Bloglines, Feedster or Technorati but the rsults are certainly not anything close to a representation of which are the RSS feeds covering that topic on a systematic basis.

Photo credit: Jim DeLillo

RSS is a like a diffusing prism capable of making periodically updated content, news and information multiply its ability to reach multiple audiences across multiple channels.

For now, RSS feeds based on content categories are not easily found on major search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo. And while this is gradually changing as the majors have started to index RSS content too, it is very difficult for a journalists, researcher or scholar to find a comprehensive and professionally organized resource where one could find RSS content by category of coverage, language, authority.

But wouldn't that be absolutely useful?

In other words, what I say is that there is no equivalent in the RSS world to what Google or Yahoo do for the Web. A central place where one can go and be sure to find a good 80 or 90 percent of what is relevant ad available out there.

Many blog and RSS search engines claim to be omni-comprehensive, but from my experience none can make that claim outside of the top two or three players. To the ignorant eye it would appear next to logical that figures like Technorati, Feedster, PubSub, Daypop, Bloglines or Newsgator would be the best entities to take advantage of their RSS coverage abilities to provide this type of service.

Syndic8, a major RSS directory wanted from the beginning to be such a place, but a decidedly unfriendly interface never allowed it to. More recently Yahoo and MSN seem to have understood the potential hidden under the RSS flag and have quietly starting indexing an increasingly large number of RSS feeds.

So, it comes with the nature of things, that as soon as some of these new and emerging RSS search engines and directories have enough content, usability and exposure to become serious reference points, RSS SEO will become as important or more than SEO itself.

Here is why.

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