One of the things on my to-do list today was building some subscribed links for certain Google queries to generate relevant content on Hmm. I would collect these query results under a single MakeYouGoHmm subscribed link XML file and then subscribe to it under my name. I’m recording my notes and code from the process here.

My first test was altering the subscribed links to point to my bio whenever someone subscribed and logged in typed a query for my name. Since many sites/people have a profile or bio page somewhere, this seems like a more real world useful example than Hello World which is typically offered as a “hey this works” example.

Follow along if you’d like to build one for linking to your about/bio page, here’s how to do that:

STEP 1. fire up your favorite text editor and add “hello world” example to start with. Save this file as “domain-subscribedlink.xml” — in my case I used “makeyougohmm-subscribedlink.xml.” You can name this file anything you want, of course, but this is the naming convention I used.

STEP 2. In the Hello World example code, change the title from:

Replace YOURNAME with your name:

STEP 3. Change the more_url code:

Replace with YOURURL without the http:// part, which is the location to your about/bio page. Here is how mine looks:

STEP 4. Add from 1-3 lines of short text about you by changing:

Replace with at least one line of description text like this (change YOURNAME to your name):

STEP 5. Verify and save the XML file. If all the above steps are done correctly you should have a file which looks something like this:

Everything look correct? Saved? Move on.

STEP 6. FTP the domain-subscribedlink.xml file to your website space. I chose to put in an ext subdirectory for Hmm, you can put wherever you want on your site. Tip: might want to make it a somewhat uncluttered place, so you don’t forget about it.

STEP 7. Per the Google instructions:

Go to http://www.google.com/coop/manage/subscribedlinks. You’ll see a page with a space to enter in a URL for the XML files defining your Subscribed Links. Enter the URL of your modified file and click the “Add feed” button.

If you want to try my test URL out above use the following URL:
http://www.makeyougohmm.com/ext/makeyougohmm-subscribedlink1.xml

OR you can also subscribe by going to step #8

STEP 8. Now wait for a few minutes. Your subscribed link(s) should show up on your profile page [here’s my profile page]. Be sure to keep track of your profile URL so you can share on your website. Others can subscribe to your subscribed links from your profile. Have a few minutes gone by? Now you can run a test query for “YOURNAME” — in my case try “tdavid”

My example looks like the picture at the top of this post. How does yours look?

Multiple queries for same search results
Sometimes people call me “TD”, sometimes “TDavid” and I also use “TDavids” plural when the singular isn’t available, so I wanted to modify the file to be able to show the same bio page for all three of those specific queries. In my next How To for subscribed links, I’ll go through step by step how to alter this file so multiple queries can lead to the same result page as well as using links inside the description text.

Expect that link a little later (will update the link on this post), as I’m still working on that post.

Update 12:58pm PST: Seems like their system isn’t working at the moment for any changed/new XML files.

Update 1:24pm PST: Ahh, my bad. I had wrongly used the same ResultSpec ID for my first and second XML file, invalidating both of them. Fixed that by removing the file, fixing the error and updating the XML file.

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