How do I claim my blog on Feedster?

The world of weblogs is still somewhat akin to the Wild West, and for any given service or capability, there are dozens, if not hundreds of companies trying to fill the need. Companies that gain some traction then promptly expand into new areas, unsurprisingly, so it becomes hard to differentiate sites like Feedster from Technorati and even Google's Blog Search @ Google system.

Feedster is interesting, however, because they try to analyze their data and ascertain popular weblogs, popular search terms and so on. Of course, others are doing this too, but innovation is always bred in the swirl of hyper-competitiveness, so that's okay.

So. If you want to modify how Feedster displays your weblog on search results, you'll need to "claim it", as you've figured out, then modify the listing data on their site.

To claim it, you'll need to first Create a Feedster Account if you don't already have one, then either log in to your new account or find a link to one of your posts on the Feedster site.

Now Feedster will give you some special code that you'll need to add to either the an HTML code snippet to a new entry on your weblog that looks like this:

which formats as:

No Need to Click Here - I'm just claiming my feed at Feedster

or simply use a small text sequence that appears somewhere on a new entry:

feedster-77d5063519493fd3e835bf49656ec0ff-feedster

When you're done adding this content to a new entry on your weblog, publish it or otherwise make sure it appears in your RSS feed, then click on the "Claim Feed" button that Feedster offers on the claim your feed page.

Once you've claimed your feed, you can go back to your weblog and delete the new entry, so please don't feel you need to keep it forever!

Once that's done you can make the necessary modifications to your Feedster configuration by clicking on the "i" graphic next to your feed information: get to it by searching for one of your most recent blog entries (perhaps the Feedster test entry).

There are a couple of sections to your Feed configuratino on Feedster, the first of which is Basic Settings, offering title, home page URL, description, creator, and so on.

Then the second section is what you seek: Feed Icon:

Specify the icon or picture you'd like to use, remembering that it'll be shrunk down to 60x40, then while you're at it, consider filling out the subsequent sections of the page too: Contact Info, Geography, Profiled Search Terms and Copyright Settings.

Click on "Save My Changes" and you should be good to go!