As part of the research for the RSS Profile, I compiled statistics on how frequently RSS core elements and namespace elements appear in feeds.

The full report reveals that the most popular namespace element is dc:language from the Dublin Core namespace, which appeared in 36 percent of the feeds.

The second-most common namespace element is atom:link from the Atom syndication format, appearing in 15 percent.

Four core elements were found in fewer than 1 percent of the feeds surveyed: textInput (0.31 percent), rating (0.26), skipDays (0.10) and the skipDays element day (also 0.10).

The following channel elements were found in 1,933 RSS 2.0 feeds, which were chosen because they appear in OPML subscription lists published on the web. The quantity and percentage columns refer to how many feeds contained the element at least once. Parent-child relationships are indicated by hyphens ("-") in the element names. Namespace elements are indicated by colons (":").

Another report is available for item elements.

Element Quantity Percentage
channel 1933 100.00%
title 1933 100.00%
link 1932 99.95%
description 1928 99.74%
item 1893 97.93%
generator 1228 63.53%
language 987 51.06%
lastBuildDate 733 37.92%
copyright 715 36.99%
dc:language 700 36.21%
image 521 26.95%
image-url 520 26.90%
image-link 519 26.85%
image-title 518 26.80%
ttl 412 21.31%
docs 411 21.26%
pubDate 391 20.23%
managingEditor 370 19.14%
webMaster 346 17.90%
atom:link 292 15.11%
image-height 217 11.23%
image-width 217 11.23%
category 191 9.88%
dc:creator 166 8.59%
sy:updateFrequency 164 8.48%
sy:updatePeriod 164 8.48%
dc:date 160 8.28%
admin:generatorAgent 158 8.17%
sy:updateBase 150 7.76%
feedburner:browserFriendly 147 7.60%
dc:rights 95 4.91%
skipHours 92 4.76%
skipHours-hour 92 4.76%
cloud 87 4.50%
admin:errorReportsTo 84 4.35%
feedburner:awareness 61 3.16%
cc:license 55 2.85%
image-description 52 2.69%
feedburner:emailServiceId 39 2.02%
feedburner:feedburnerHostname 39 2.02%
geo:lat 39 2.02%
geo:long 39 2.02%
topix:rsslink 17 0.88%
incremental 16 0.83%
atom:id 15 0.78%
openSearch:itemsPerPage 15 0.78%
openSearch:startIndex 14 0.72%
openSearch:totalResults 14 0.72%
feedburner:feedFlare 12 0.62%
itunes:author 12 0.62%
itunes:owner 12 0.62%
itunes:owner-itunes:email 12 0.62%
itunes:category 11 0.57%
itunes:explicit 11 0.57%
itunes:image 10 0.52%
itunes:owner-itunes:name 10 0.52%
itunes:subtitle 9 0.47%
itunes:summary 8 0.41%
dc:publisher 7 0.36%
dc:subject 7 0.36%
itunes:keywords 7 0.36%
textInput 6 0.31%
textInput-description 6 0.31%
textInput-link 6 0.31%
textInput-name 6 0.31%
textInput-title 6 0.31%
thespringbox:skin 6 0.31%
blogChannel:mySubscriptions 5 0.26%
media:rating 5 0.26%
rating 5 0.26%
xhtml:meta 5 0.26%
itunes:block 4 0.21%
media:category 4 0.21%
media:copyright 4 0.21%
media:credit 4 0.21%
media:keywords 4 0.21%
icbm:latitude 3 0.16%
icbm:longitude 3 0.16%
itunes:new-feed-url 3 0.16%
cf:listinfo 2 0.10%
cf:listinfo-cf:sort 2 0.10%
feedstersearch:lastArticle 2 0.10%
feedstersearch:pageId 2 0.10%
feedstersearch:totalResultCount 2 0.10%
Interglacial:generator_url 2 0.10%
Interglacial:livejournal 2 0.10%
Interglacial:self_url 2 0.10%
ng:mceImage 2 0.10%
skipDays 2 0.10%
skipDays-day 2 0.10%
blogChannel:blogRoll 1 0.05%
cf:listinfo-cf:group 1 0.05%
cf:treatAs 1 0.05%
itunes:link 1 0.05%
live:identity 1 0.05%
live:identity-live:alias 1 0.05%
live:identity-live:id 1 0.05%
media:description 1 0.05%
media:thumbnail 1 0.05%
my:docs 1 0.05%
rar:archive 1 0.05%
wiki:interwiki 1 0.05%
Comments

As a syndication framework developer, I have always had a strong interest in doing this type of data mining as a means of understanding the syndication feed landscape. Thanks for these statistics!

Is there any way you could provide how you went about compiling this information (data sources, methods, algorithms, etc.) so that those who are interested can do their own analysis?

Sure. I'll write about it on my blog, because I'd like to see people help improve the methodology and pull in a larger number of feeds. It was tough to compile.

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