Web content using RSS Feeds, is it legal? How search engines treat them?

[santra21]

Recently I found some websites which are collecting jobs in all positions from other reputed jobsites in USA and worldwide. I think they are using RSS Technology (Really Simple Syndication) to collect jobs from other jobsites. By displaying jobs from other job sites will affect the number of visitors of the other sites. Such websites are making business using the content of other websites. Is it legal to collect data from other job sites? I think it's very simple idea to develop a job site using RSS Feeds. How these types of websites are treated in search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing etc.

SNIP

[cscgal]

Yes, it's legal, because if the job sites didn't want to allow it, they wouldn't be providing RSS feeds to use. However, mashup sites like these (sites that aggregate multiple RSS feeds) tend to not do so well in the search engines, and even worse off since the Google Panda algorithm.