Blogger Magic - Supporting A BlogSpot URL Change

Blog owners are always changing the URLs of their blogs - then asking why Blogger does not provide automatic redirection, to the new URL.

We see the occasional query, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger.

How do I redirect my readers, to my new URL?

And this is a need that will likely go unfulfilled.

If Blogger provided automated redirection, spammers would abuse it, as part of a spam publishing strategy.

Blogger wants to keep the Blogger infrastructure as free from spam, as possible.

Changing the URL is simple enough.

Just use the Publishing wizard, in the Settings - Basic page, and Edit the "Blog Address". Subject to availability, your blog will have a new URL - as you watch.


The change is not difficult. Just Edit "Blog Address".


But with a new URL, unplanned, you'll lose traffic.

Blogger does not support automated blog to blog redirection.

Trying to keep the Blogger ecosystem clean from spam, Blogger actively discourages automated redirection. Neither JavaScript or meta refresh redirection is recommended.

You can use passive redirection, though - and give your readers the choice, to read the blog using the new URL.

• Setup a blog cluster.
• Setup a stub blog, at the old URL.

Setup a blog cluster.

Publish a blog at the old URL - and pair the old and new blogs, actively. There are a number of possible techniques to use, to combine two blogs as equals.

You will need informative, interesting, and unique content, for both blogs, to get the most from this approach.

Setup a stub blog, at the old URL.

Publish a blog at the old URL - and add a single post, advising your readers about the change - with a link, taking them to the new blog. You can use a custom 404 display, to collect all existing links to posts in the blog, which will take your readers to the single post.

A Featured Post is perfect, as the single post in the stub blog.

You can redirect the blog posts feed, even though you can't redirect the posts themselves. Just redirect the old blog feed, to the new blog posts feed URL.

Combine the two approaches, if you like.

There's no need to consider the two approaches as mutually exclusive. You can use techniques from each, if you like. Simply pick an approach that suits your readers.

Just don't look for automated redirection. That's not likely to happen.

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Some #Blogger blog owners decide to change the URL of their blog - then ask how to setup automated redirection, from the old URL to the new. That is, however not likely to be an option provided, or even allowed, by Blogger.

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A Domain Root, With Blogger And Non Blogger Hosts

Some blog owners publish a domain, and try to combine a Blogger blog, and a non Blogger website, in the domain root.

They publish one host to the domain root - and the other to the "www" alias.

This combination may be supported by the non Blogger host - but Blogger blog reliability will suffer. And the readers may become confused, when they click to view the blog, and get the website - or vice versa.

There is a special relationship between the domain root and "www" alias. Blogger takes advantage of this relationship, to provide improved reliability for a blog, when published to a custom domain.

Ignoring the special relationship, and splitting the domain root and "www" alias, leads to confusion - and decreased blog reliability.

Please don't publish two different hosts into the domain root / "www" pair.

Please, don't combine a Blogger blog and a non Blogger website, in the domain root / "www" alias duality.

There are 3 mutually exclusive configurations, for combining a Blogger blog and a non Blogger website in a domain, which will produce a reliable blog. Your readers will be happier - and the search engines will index the blog better - if you stick to one of the 3 supported configurations.

Taking the 3 supported Blogger configurations, we can add a properly published non Blogger website - and produce 3 more possible variants.

1. Non Blogger website published to the "site" alias.
2. Non Blogger website published to the domain root.
3. Non Blogger website published to the "www" alias.

Non Blogger website published to the "site" alias.

Here, the blog is published to the "www" alias, with the domain root redirected to the "www" alias - and the website is published to an additional virtual host, such as "site". This is a variant of the Blogger asymmetrical DNS configuration.

mydomain.com. 3600 IN A 216.239.32.21
mydomain.com. 3600 IN A 216.239.34.21
mydomain.com. 3600 IN A 216.239.36.21
mydomain.com. 3600 IN A 216.239.38.21
www.mydomain.com. 3600 IN CNAME ghs.google.com.
site.mydomain.com 3600 IN A 162.210.101.54

Non Blogger website published to the domain root.

Here, the blog is published to the "blog" alias - and the website is published to the domain root. The website may or may not support redirection of the "www" alias to the domain root. This is a variant of the Blogger additional virtual host DNS configuration.

mydomain.com. 3600 IN A 162.210.101.54
www.mydomain.com 3600 IN A 162.210.101.54
blog.mydomain.com 3600 IN CNAME ghs.google.com.

Non Blogger website published to the "www" alias.

Here, the blog is published to the "blog" alias - and the website is published to the "www" alias. The website may or may not support redirection of the domain root to the "www" alias. This is a variant of the Blogger additional virtual host DNS configuration.

mydomain.com 3600 IN A 162.210.101.54
www.mydomain.com 3600 IN A 162.210.101.54
blog.mydomain.com 3600 IN CNAME ghs.google.com.

Your blog will be more reliably online - and your readers will be happier. And happier readers leads to better search engine indexing - and to more readers.

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#Blogger blogs published to custom domains use both the domain root / "www" alias, for reliable connectivity. Trying to publish a blog, and a non Blogger website, to the domain root / "www" alias, leads to confusion - and decreased reliability for the blog.

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The "About Me" Gadget, And Google+

Some blog owners are accustomed to editing their Blogger profiles, from time to time.

Publishing a blog that presents oneself to ones readers, openly, is important to some blog owners. The Blogger profile becomes a blog component that is edited, periodically, to keep the blog reader friendly.

The Blogger profile editor produces content which is displayed in the "About Me" gadget, for single owner blogs. Multiple owner blogs, complementarily, display "About Us" - which provides a different display.

Google+ profiles are edited using the Google+ desktop - and Google+ desktop content does not display in "About Me", in Blogger.

"About Me" displays Blogger Profile content. Once you upgrade to a Google+ profile, you won't have access to the Blogger Profile Editor - and you'll have no way to edit Blogger Profile content.

If the blog has been upgraded, you won't be able to edit your Blogger profile.



If you can edit your Google+ profile, sufficiently, you'll be good. If not, you can work around the problem.

Just create your own custom "About Me" gadget, using a Blogger HTML or Text gadget. You can do this in under an hour.



Add an "HTML / JavaScript" gadget. That's how you start.



Use the Layout "Add a Gadget" page, add an "HTML" or "Text" gadget, and fill the gadget content with your profile. With a little work, you can make a gadget with as much detail as any Google+ page or profile.

• Desktop banner background / icon.
• Photos.
• Text.
• Video.
• Whatever interests you - and your readers.

With a little work and imagination, you can have a blog that looks like part of your Google+ desktop.

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Owners of #Blogger blogs that use Google+ profiles want to edit their "About Me" gadgets - but find no way to do that. With a Google+ profile edited using the Google+ desktop, no "About Me" displayed content is produced.

Fortunately, it's not difficult to produce a custom "About Me" gadget.

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/blogger/Ifg3aW2yMrg

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You Cannot Fit Your Entire Blog Onto The Main Page

Some blog owners would like their readers to view the entire blog in one page.

A small blog, with very limited size, can theoretically fit on one page. If you intend to publish a blog with any future, and page rank, you will have to publish content periodically - and the size of the blog will increase, steadily.

And eventually, thanks in part to main page limitation by auto pagination, older posts in your blog will be forced into archive pages.

For a blog with any future, and publishing activity, there are four possibilities for main page size.

• Segment main page, limiting post count.
• Segment your blog, using virtual blogs.
• Use a dynamic template, and "continuous scrolling".
• Use a non dynamic template, and Jump Break - and accept archiving.

Segment main page, limiting post count.

One of the simplest ways to make your blog reader friendly is to limit main page size, using a post count limit. This won't work as a final solution, however, if you're planning to publish the blog with any regularity.

Segment your blog, using virtual blogs.

If you can break your blog into multiple subjects, you can use a Pages tabbed index to access each different subject. You can fit each different subject, possibly using Jump Break, onto one page.

To complement the virtual blogs, you can have a static main page - providing a "welcome" message, and / or indexing the virtual blogs.

Use a dynamic template, and "continuous scrolling".

For public blogs, a dynamic template, with continuous scrolling, may provide a solution. Dynamic templates, unless you a very comfortable with editing the blog template, will never offer the accessory and customisation possibilities of non dynamic templates, however.

With a dynamic template, you won't be able to use Jump Break - though some dynamic views may provide a summarised main page view.

Use a non dynamic template, and Jump Break - and accept archiving.

Careful use of Jump Break will let you limit the size of the main page. If you continue to publish posts - which is necessary for a blog with any future - you will eventually have posts displayed on archive pages.

For best results, design the blog structure - and the posts structure - consistently, and accept archiving and pagination.

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Some #Blogger blog owners would like to display all post content in one page - and ignore page display size. They do not realise that not all blog readers want to read a blog with an unlimited page size, all at once.

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Blogger, And Home / Small Business Blog Clusters

One topic of frustration, occasionally seen in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue, involves home based business blogs, that may be victims of their own success.

We are not spam - we are a network of blog owners, in select cities all over the country. I am tired of hearing the apologies, this needs to be resolved.

The blog owner is being quite polite, but insistent.

Blog clusters, whether developed by home / small business owners, or malicious spammers, create problems for all Blogger blog owners. Home / small business blogs are clearly not intentional spam - but their structure makes them easy to mistake for spam blog farms.

Blogger values the creation of blogs with original content. Replicating original content across multiple blogs however, violates the Blogger Spam policy.

Blogger Content: Spam provides a good definition of the Blogger Spam policy.

Spam: Spam takes several forms in Blogger, all of which can result in deletion of your account or blog. Some examples include creating blogs designed to drive traffic to your site or to move it up in search listings, posting comments on other people's blogs just to promote your site or product, and scraping existing content from other sources for the primary purpose of generating revenue or other personal gains.

The most recently observed home / small business blog cluster, which generated traffic in the Spam Review section of the forum, was a USA based coupon sharing club, that had expanded into other areas - such as dining, entertainment and local events.

We are MORE than a coupon group. Our network works with Disney, Nickelodeon, local restaurants, reviews and products and events locally.

Other blog clusters have involved an Australian blog franchise of electronic / tech products and services - and a California / Florida carpet / home cleaning business.

Home / small business blogs can be mistaken for spam blogs.

Each of these three examples appear to have started as home / small businesses, possibly with one blog - and grew exponentially, as franchises. And each of the examples present problems, with automated spam classification.

• Aggregation of blogs produces unfair advantage, over other small businesses using Blogger.
• Aggregation of blogs skews spam classification, by tweaking the heuristic spam filters.
• Aggregation of blogs makes detection of actual spam blog farms more difficult.

These three concerns produce side effects, in the Blogger spam mitigation program - and lead to periodic spurious spam classification of home / small business blog clusters.

As the size of the clusters increase, so does the chance of repeated classification.

• Blogger policy prevents whitelisting the blogs in the cluster.
• The more blogs in the cluster, the greater chance that one or more blogs will be classified, at any given time.
• The more blogs in the cluster, the longer it will take to review a blog, when classified.

Understand your role, in the spam classification / review process.

If you operate a home / small business, which involves blogs clustered on a geographic and / or product - service relationship - and your business is impeded by spurious spam classification, we'll work with you, and try to get your blogs reviewed.

Please, understand that your home / small business may be pushing the limits of the Blogger spam mitigation program. Try to minimise content which replicates through multiple blogs in the cluster - and content which is scraped from various commercial websites.

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Some owners / operators of home / small businesses, which use #Blogger as a backbone for their business, produce clusters of blogs, organised on a geographic / product / service basis. Rapid growth of the businesses may lead to blogs which share content too heavily - and may lead to repeated spurious spam classification.

Owners of the blogs should learn to expect occasional spam classification, and try to minimise blog features which lead to spam classification.

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Blogger Blogs Cannot Be Used As Gateways

We see evidence of confusion, from time to time, in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I?.

How do I move an established blog to WordPress (or any other platform), while retaining the history, reader interest, search engine reputation?

Some blog owners think blog readers are cattle (to be herded from blog to blog) - or monkeys (to be attracted by shiny things).

We've known for some time, that Blogger blogs cannot be used as gateways, with traffic automatically redirected from one blog to another - or from a blog to a non Google website. Use of traffic redirection scripts is a known cause of blogs classified as malware hosts.

If you wish to relocate a Blogger blog in another hosting service, you can always publish your Blogger blog, and a non Google blog / website, as dual hosts, in a non BlogSpot domain.

With your Blogger blog and non Blogger website published to the same domain, you can then combine the two, dynamically. Just remember to add unique content to each, periodically, to retain search engine reputation.

1. Publish your Blogger blog to a host in your custom domain.
2. Publish your WordPress (or any other platform) blog to a host in your custom domain.
3. Combine the two blogs.
4. Let your readers access either blog, as their choice.
5. Update both blogs, to retain search engine reputation, regularly.
6. When the WordPress (or any other platform) blog receives enough reputation and traffic, make the Blogger blog into a stub blog.

Just don't build a maze of blogs and web sites - and don't waste time or money artificially developing traffic. Blogger blog readers are attracted by interesting, unique, and useful content - and are retained by new content, added periodically.

And don't try adding clever code, to shuffle your readers from one blog to another. That could make your blog look like one member in a well planned spam blog farm - and leave you reporting

Help! Blogger just deleted my blog!!

.

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Redirecting The Traffic From Your Blogger Blog

Some Blogger blog owners are confused about their ability to redirect traffic to, or from, their blogs.

Sometimes this leads to problems, as in the need to report a problem with spam classification, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken

Why was my blog just deleted, for "Malicious JavaScript"?

Other people will want to know why, after renaming their blog, all the search engine references now point to a dead URL. Still others may want to rename specific posts, and yet have the post URLs match the new titles.

Blog URLs, and Post URLs, are complex details, for Blogger blogs. By default, both are managed for you. Not everybody understands how to manage blog and post URLs, when necessary.

Not every blog owner understands that ones readers are not possessions, to be manipulated at will.

Spammers would appreciate the ability to use Blogger blogs as starting points.

Many spammers would love to use various Blogger blogs as gateways, redirecting their readers either to other Blogger blogs, or to non Google controlled websites. In order to discourage spamming activity, neither type of redirect is permitted, by the Blogger spam classifier.

Even if automated redirection was permitted, many redirection techniques may not work for everybody. Modern browsers, designed to prevent abusive activity like hacking and spamming, may have filters which explicitly block DNS settings, and scripts, designed to redirect traffic from one website to another.

If you migrate a blog, then redirect, you may not see consistent results.

If you design your URL migration strategy to require automated redirection - and even if Blogger / Google does not delete the blog for abusive technique - you may still not see a consistent transfer of existing traffic, to your new URL.

You can redirect a Blogger blog, to a non BlogSpot URL, using properly setup custom domain publishing - "CNAME" referral. That is the only valid way to redirect a BlogSpot URL, to a non BlogSpot URL. Any other method will eventually leave you posting, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken

Why was my blog just deleted, by Blogger?

If you migrate to a new BlogSpot URL, use a Welcome post in a stub blog.

If you rename your blog - and publish to a new BlogSpot URL, your only recourse is to publish a "stub" (empty) blog to the old URL, and visually redirect your readers.

This blog is now published as "blogger-status-for-real.blogspot.com". Please update your bookmarks.

Blogger does not offer ".htaccess" features, such as redirection.

One disappointment, experienced by non Blogger webmasters, is the lack of ".htaccess" based redirection. You do not have access to the "blogspot.com" root folder - and you cannot use ".htaccess" based redirection.

You can redirect the feed - after you setup a new feed.

You can, if you wish, redirect the blog feed, after renaming the blog - but this should be done only when necessary.

There are several specific cases where the blog feed should not be redirected.

Custom redirects does not provide BlogSpot to BlogSpot redirection.

Blogger recently provided us the option to redirect traffic from one blog post to another - but the syntax used by the custom redirects wizard explicitly prevents redirection outside the base blog URL. That said, we have seen some imaginative redirections, between different URLs in the same blog.

Use of the custom redirect feature can generate interesting problems, not all of which can be prevented, easily. You can redirect some URLs - but you need to understand what you can, and cannot do - and why you cannot do everything that you would like.

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