Google’s Custom Homepage has a new feature: Feed Excerpts.

Google’s Custom Homepage is a very easy-to-use free feed reader featuring web “desktop” accessories such as weather reports, moon phases, clocks, stock market reports and other Google Gadgets. I tend to stay away from the Google Gadgets, but I love it as a fast feed reader.

Typically, feeds are displayed as titles from any feed source you add to your Google Custom Homepage. Today, they added a small plus and time stamp to each feed title. Click on the plus sign and it expands to show the beginning excerpt of the article.

This is a fabulous addition and time saver. Many bloggers, taggers, and social bookmark submitters have no clue how to write a decent title. Seeing a text excerpt helps influence the decision to click or not click.

Personally, I like using Google’s Custom Homepage. I monitor many feeds from various sources, so I like the speed of reading down title lists to see if anything jumps out at me. Instead of checking out wonderful titled posts that end up being nothing or a link to the real article, I can check the text and skip them if the content doesn’t match the title.

In turn, a quick glance at the excerpt might turn a bad title into a new discovery.

Either way, it’s a great feature.

Lorelle VanFossen blogs about blogging and WordPress on Lorelle on WordPress.