WebProNews

Searches at Google.com won't turn up RSS or Atom feeds, with the exception of podcasts, as Google makes a change to improve the user experience.

Searching for feeds will mean using either Google Reader or iGoogle to do so. The update made by Google takes feeds out of the standard search results.

At the Webmaster Central blog, Bogdan Stanescu wrote a couple of reasons for this change:

Feeds increase the likelihood that users see duplicate search results.
Users clicking on a feed may miss valuable content available only in the HTML page.

Webmasters who publish podcasts and prefer not to have those feeds included in search results can apply a "noindex" attribute to them. Those who use Google's FeedBurner have the option to check a Noindex box under the Publicize tab, Stanescu wrote.

One commenter asked a question about this change that we think indirectly pointed to Google's motivation for scrubbing feeds out of its index. Peter Lacis asked if feeds would still be effective for pushing content to the index for SEO purposes.

We're going to guess that the answer here is "no."