How on earth does Google Reader parse RSS?

Question

I'm pulling hair out, i might pull a tooth out next, thats how frustrated i am.

I have deleted (for the purpose of proving a point) ALL my RSS files in my wordpress site http://baked-beans.tv

No matter what i edit, Google Reader reads what it wants, ie: the posts, and all it's content!

So how on earth am I supposed to edit the content which most of my RSS subscribers will view (since Google Reader is very popular)

If you look here: http://baked-beans.tv/feed/ There is NO content!

And yet if I add this URL to Google reader, it generates full posts in the feed.

Furthermore! If I edit say... wp-includes/feed-rss2.php I can see those changes within the RSS parser of Safari, Firefox, etc, but again, Google just shows the same thing, the entire post.

This really isnt on. If you go to Google Reader, and click on "Show Details" it says "Feed URL: http://baked-beans.tv/feed/" Which is just a total lie.

I really need to control how people see posts. The posts contain hefty video and a lot of images, and it parses the post in a really unattractive way.

Thanks in advance, Marc

Answer 1

I'm pretty sure Google is using a cached result because your feed is completely empty (which is invalid RSS, which is probably interpreted as an error condition, like the feed being down).

Try showing a feed that is valid, but empty. That should get Google to pick up the change sooner or later.

Answer 2

If you'd like to edit the contents of posts that were already crawled by Reader, you'll need to republish them with the same GUID (if using RSS) or ID (if using Atom). Reader keeps copies of posts indefinitely (so that it can show historical data for feeds), and it keys things off of the ID. If it sees a post with the same ID as one it already has, it'll update the content of its copy with the new crawled content (more details here).