How to get RSS information into Excel

For example, earlier this week, I was analysing discussion about Sharon Osbourne and Vic Reeves at the Brit Awards (they had a bit of a bust-up, possibly because they represent competitors in the bingo space).

So, supposing I want to get information into Excel about blog posts about both of them. I could start by creating an advanced Google blog search in order to find posts mentioning both names published in the week after the Brits. Then:

• Create a Google Docs spreadsheet
• Go to your blogsearch results page
• Copy the URL of the results as RSS
• Create a formula in your Google Docs spreadsheet containing:

=importfeed(rss-url,,true)

Make sure you wrap the URL in double quotes. The empty second argument is for restricting which bits of data you want from the RSS (the help is very good). The ‘true’ third argument says you want a header row to tell you what your columns are. If you want to add a fourth numerical argument, you can limit how many rows you return.

Once you have done this, the information from your RSS feed (in this case your custom search) is pulled into the spreadsheet - you can then either work on it there or (more likely) export it to Excel and work on it locally to make some cool charts and graphs for your presentations.