Elasticsearch-Powered RSS Feed for Scalable Content Distribution

Problem

Our company’s content was consumed by a variety of external partners, platforms, and aggregators that required up-to-date feeds tailored to their specific audiences. The existing solution was manual, time-consuming, and error-prone, relying on static exports and frequent developer intervention. This caused delays in content availability, limited scalability, and increased operational costs.

Stakeholders

• Editorial and Marketing Teams: Needed faster, more flexible ways to syndicate targeted content feeds to partners.

• Product Management: Wanted to enable new business models via content syndication and improve SEO through dynamic feeds.

• External Partners & Aggregators: Required reliable, up-to-date RSS feeds to power their own platforms and user experiences.

• Engineering Team: Needed a low-maintenance, scalable solution to reduce manual work and improve system reliability.

Solution

I led the design and development of a serverless RSS feed generator using Google Cloud Functions integrated with Elasticsearch. This service dynamically queries live content indexes to produce customized RSS feeds on demand, based on filters like tags, categories, and publication dates.

This architecture eliminated the need for manual feed updates and allowed non-technical teams to launch and manage new feeds independently through configurable parameters.

Commercial Impact

• Accelerated content delivery from hours/days to real-time, enhancing partner satisfaction and enabling faster time-to-market for campaigns.
  
  

• Reduced operational costs by automating a previously manual process, freeing engineering resources for strategic projects.
  
  

• Expanded business opportunities by supporting syndication deals with new partners and improving SEO rankings through dynamic, targeted feeds.
  
  

• Increased content reach and engagement, directly contributing to revenue growth and brand visibility.