Back in January 2007 I did a study on next blog button pushes on blogger and blogspot. Google puts a bar across blogpost hosted blogs which lets users, well, log in, post, search or randomly reach another blog. It's really an advert for the service.
I counted how many button pushes it took for me to reach 100 English language non-spam blogs. It took 241 button pushes. I also discovered a lot of spam; in particular redirects to porn sites.
I've repeated this exercise this week and can say that the random button never once took me to porn at all. On a few occasions it took me to a hard sell site that was essentially a spam landing page.
Google's cleaned up the button. So, it is better? Ah... last year it took me 241 button pushes to find 100 English language sites. This year it took 309.
The difference is in non-English blogs. They've doubled from last year. There are a few reasons for this; Wordpress and SixApart are likely to be clawing market share away from Blogger in the UK, Canada and the USA. The Next Button isn't entirely random it; it's reciprocal and some geographic areas (thus languages) may be more likely to press the button than others.
My chart for 2007 looked like this:
The chart for 2008 looks like this:
Friday, May 02, 2008
Google cleans up Next Blog >> Presses
Thursday, November 01, 2007
How MadKast grows
I've installed MadKast twice on this blog. I was one of the earlier adopters and quite liked it. I removed the widget because I identified it was causing posts to enter a reload cycle.
I added it again this week and that problem seems to have been sorted. I've noticed, though, that the MadKast icon does not seem to show beside the most recent post title. MadKast provides a way to quickly add the widget to blogger blogs, which I tried, and which broke the blog so I suspect the growing start up is still ironing out bugs.
Perhaps the biggest change was the email I got. I didn't get a welcome email last time. I did today.
Andrew,
Just wanted to drop a quick line to thank you for installing madKast on Andrew R H Girdwood. If you have any questions or comments about its functionality or use, please let me know. Also know that in the next few weeks we will be releasing detailed analytics information to blog publishers, so that you know what your readers are sharing and with whom, as well as what other sites they read.
We tend to find that readers share more if they're told about what madKast is by the blog publisher, so if you are comfortable with telling your readers about madKast it will no doubt lead to more sharing of your content.
Thanks again for installing madKast and please let me know if you have any feedback.
Best,
Josh
Evangelist, madKast.com
It just takes a little effort but I like getting emails like this. It works for madKast too because if only a small percentage of bloggers take their advice and explain what the icon is - then madKast still gets hundreds of advertorials.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
I'm now a Feedburner
I've avoided Feedburner until now.
Why?
I'm old school. Heck. In Search terms I'm ancient. I first came to RSS as means to build links and the Feedburner got in the way of that. Even when RSS and subscribers became a more important/more likely Quality Signal than the likely links generated I wanted to remain in control of my RSS source.
Today Feedburner and Blogger joined up. It's now possible to integrate Feedburner and BlogSpot so that Blogger automatically redirects to Feedburner.
In addition, Feedburner's MyBrand is free.
As a result I can automatically publish Feedburner RSS to an arhg.net domain. Indeed; you'll find this blog's RSS at http://feeds.arhg.net/AndrewRHGirdwood - but you shouldn't need to update a thing. Just subscribe, m'kay?
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Blogger breaks the new Google GUI
Meh. I'm not liking the new link to Blogger in Google's "more" link in the new GUI.
Looks innocent enough? The problem is that Blogger uses a meta refresh and breaks my Back Button. If I select Blogger by mistake then I cannot click back to Google's home page.
If this was an AdWords link - Google would reject it. Why is it here in their homepage's interface?
Friday, February 16, 2007
Yes, but what about Blogger?
I love Google Reader. I got excited when Google announced you could now view the number of subscribers your feed had on Google Reader or Google IG.
It works via the http header. This is geeky. If we worked out what percentage of bloggers didn't have a scooby as to what an http header was then we'd be looking at a large number.
I use Blogger for this blog. I will. It's a personal project. As a Blogger user I cannot use this new Google Reader feature. Blogger doesn't let me look at the http headers.
As a Blogger user I can't use the Webmaster Console either as I can't upload my verification file to BlogSpot. I can't view my backlinks.
The Google Tribes need to coordinate more. They do. Is the rest of Google trying to push me out of Blogger?
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Next Blog »
Since I moved the blog over to Google's Custom Domains I've had to accept Blogger's navbar across the top. I can't complain. Anyone can plainly see that I'm no design guru!
The Next Blog » interests me. It takes people off the site. It's like an old webring button. BlogSpot readers should be able to skip from blog to blog. Well. That's the theory. There's a lot of crap in there.
I decided to count how many Next Blog » clicks it would take me to visit 100 English language blogs. It took 241 clicks.
Here's a break down of a lazy Sunday hour.
There where three types of failure:
- Taken to a spam or porn blog
- Redirected off to a non-blog
- Taken to a blog missing the navbar
It's certainly possible for Google to check that a blog has the navbar before including it in the Next Blog ». Humble webrings do this. Google Analytics does this.
Of the spam and redirects out of the system there were two culprits who kept on coming up. Of the 32 redirects 15 went to JokesNJunk.com and 16 went to LookUpLive. JokesNJunk can still be found in Google. If you search for LookUpLive on Google there is just a diatribe of complaints about them.
I don't think Blogger should just look at taking out the spam. I think Blogger should enhance the button. I would be happy to fill in a little preferences poll and then enjoy a Next Blog » akin to StumbleUpon. In fact, since I surf with Google's personalised search then shouldn't Google already be able to to direct me to random but interesting blog.
Until that day the Next Blog » is simply incentive for people to spam the system.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Blogger and BlogSpot down
The brave techies at Blogger have been poking screwdrivers into the servers - all with the aim of making the service better. Even Google's official blogs displayed Blogger's maintenance message.
When is 9:30?
At the time of this posting the "old" version of blogger (which seems to include Blogger's own Buzz Blog) is still down.
Saturday, January 06, 2007
Blogger Custom Domain and my experiences
Google released a new "custom domain" option for Blogger. It's just a DNS setting which allows you to use your domain with Blog*Spot. You pay for the domain. Google pays for the hosting. I don't need to save the money but as this a kewl new toy from Google - I made the move and then thought about it later. Heh.
This blog used to use the URL www.arhg.net/blog/. It seems Google (the people at Blogger) didn't think about people who published to a folder. I'm sure not everyone FTP publishes to the root of their domain. In fact, I suspect more people publish to a folder or directory than root. The Custom Domain option doesn't cope with this very well.
After the DNS change filtered through my blog moved to www.arhg.net. The links and images in the blog, however, still pointed to www.arhg.net/blog/ and there was no /blog/ folder at Blog*Spot.
Simply put - the change broke the blog.
Here's the fix. I took back control of www.arhg.net and told Google to publish the blog to blog.arhg.net. That happened quickly. The links and requests for images at www.arhg.net/blog/ remained in place.
I used .htaccess to redirect anything in the /blog/ folder which ended in .html or .xml to the new blog.arhg.net. Since the images hadn't moved they weren't included in the redirect rule.
A quick way of applying redirects to just the /blog/ folder is to put the .htaccess in the /blog folder.
Here's my .htaccess rules.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^arhg.net$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^([0-9]*_[0-9]*_[0-9]*)_arhg_archive\.html$ http://blog.arhg.net/$1_archive.html [L,R=301]
RewriteRule ^(.*)\.html$ http://blog.arhg.net/$1.html [R=301]
RewriteRule ^atom\.xml$ http://blog.arhg.net/feeds/posts/default [R=301]In time I'll move the images over to Google. Just to keep things neat.
In summary - did the custom domain option break your images? Publish to a sub-domain and redirect the .html and .xml files to the new address.
Thursday, December 28, 2006
<$I18N$LinksToThisPost>
Gosh. Two posts in one week! Is the world ending? Have I come strangely addicted to blogging? No! No! (or I hope not on both accounts).
I'm simply enjoying the gap between Christmas and Hogmanay (or New Year as SEO Sassenachs would call it). Addictions are much more likely to be in the form of tracking down episodes 128 and onwards of Inuyasha on YouTube, or anywhere, now that Google's pulled the series or through Untold Legends 2 on the PSP.
That Untold Legends 2 link goes to Amazon (old habits die hard - I paid for the second time through Uni via SEO and affiliate deals) and it reminds me that I've not been on the site in aaages. How can I tell? Amazon have keywords in the URL. I would have noticed that the very second that happened if I was a regular visitor. These days, yep, I tend to go to Tesco, Tesco Direct or Game. Linky!
With this brief lease of extra time I've taken a few hours to muck around with Blogger. I can't be accused of doing that in the past! Gosh. I am determined to use Blogger for this blog. This is Google'n'Blog. It seems appropriate. I'll Wordpress elsewhere. Google has so much work to do - still, and this is Blogger 2. The new custom layout options do not, and may never, work with FTP publishing. Although there is a lot still to do I can see why Google like the system. It's simple. It scales. The $dollar$ variables remind me of old TinyMUSH code (and that's showing my heritage). First off was fixing a bug in this new (to me) template. The bottom of posts end with <$I18N$LinksToThisPost> which, clearly, does not look right. It just takes a second to work out that the second dollar is in the wrong place. It should be <$I18NLinksToThisPost$>. You could just change that to "Links To This Post" as HTML text though. I say that because I've not yet found a way to change the values of the $variables. Keep in mind I've only been mucking around for a few hours and most of that time seems wasted on waiting for the entire blog to re-post after each tweak!
The "personal opinion" disclaimer has been put back in. It's naff but something tells me that that's important. The blog title Andrew Girdwood now links home. The 302 redirect on the domain level is now a 301. Not sure why I had it as a 302 to begin with... I suspect I had plans to grow a little portfolio or test site at the domain and have the blog as a part of it. Well. Ahem. Should that ever happen then Google will pick the changes up quickly enough for me. Individual blog post headings (like <$I18N$LinksToThisPost>) on the front page link to the actual blog posts. I've kept them as >h3< tags too.
Yes! *gasp*
H tags as links!
I did it! I did!
It makes perfect logical sense to me. The title of the post/article/story goes to the page for that post/article/story. The front page (think of a news paper) as an overall heading and then is divided into equally important sections - which are the <h3> areas.
This is not spam. I shudder to imagine the number of people who would worry about this.
I'll continue to muck around with Blogger and look for improvements. Hopefully Google will do the same. I'm hopeful that now it's on a new platform it'll be easier to maintain, tweak and improve.
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
There...
Having said that I doubted if I had time to update this blog often enough - I seem to be writing another entry.
I've sorted out the atom.xml feed. It's being published to ARHG Net correctly now. Phew.
Atom is an interesting one. It's there because RSS is too 'owned'. Atom's certainly more powerful but it's also a faff. Even when Google seemed so reluctant to go down the RSS route, RSS feeds were clearly the syndication option worth recommending. Yahoo had embraced RSS and most of the traffic driving syndication software had too. Further more, RSS is easier for affiliates to get their head around and therefore easier for them to hook into and use. Now Google seems to have some more time for RSS; you can add it to your version of the Google home page and you can get RSS content out of Google via Google News. The .rss file extension is still shown as unrecognized though and that's just Google being slow on purpose.
Although RSS is ahead of Atom in popularity this position is not sacrosanct. If RSS's 'owners' do try and through their weight around then I suspect Atom would simply scoop defectors up by the bucket load. I remember how many webmasters dumped their .gifs in favour of .jpg when the courts ruled .gif was patented.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
There we have it
I thought I'd give UKShells a go, though I am yet to muck around and see whether I can have command line access to my web areas (for mysqldump commands or wiki installs, say). I actually tried to do this last night but it proved impossible to register new domains at set up because of a bug in their system. I rang sales today and was impressed; no hard sell, just friendly and fast action. I even picked up a token discount for my bug spotting.
So, we have www.arhg.net with no content yet and www.arhg.net/blog/ for the blog. I know. How original. ARHG may be my initials but the temptation to type ARGH is still there.
Hosting companies are a strange breed. They're an example of one of those internet companies which require a mass of customers to turn a tidy profit but who begin to hemorrhage profit if they begin to get bogged down in support. I have accounts (my first) at UK Linux and at Fasthosts. I asked Blogger.com and Fasthosts support the same question at the same time, Fasthosts replied over night and I'm still waiting on Blogger.com. Fasthosts support do get knocked awfully but the company does look after an incredible number of web sites. One day I may even have an account at RackSpace UK and I suspect it's most likely to be GameWyrd although I'll be pleased, in a way, if it turns out to be one of the new ones.
A start
You have to make a start somewhere. For me this start was October the 25th in 2005. It was a day where I've dashed back and forth between Hillside and Portobello as I attempted to move, piece by piece, the contents of my flat.
But wait. No. This is not that sort of blog. I have one of those already, it lives on LiveJournal where I think blogs like that belong.
This blog should be a different animal. I work in search engine optimisation, a form of internet marketing, search engine marketing if you would like (and some people do prefer the term). Each day I try and find enough time to check what the popular search blogs are saying, I'm checking for official news from the search engines who maintain blogs themselves or what the industry gurus think. I suppose we're lucky that we have an industry where the gurus are so loud on their blogs, in this case blogging and opinion go hand in hand with the industry landscape. We still influence each other.
I am lucky. I work for one of the best SEO firms in the world. No doubt of that. At times I find it ironic that I'm so busy I rarely get to read what other blogs say. I might be being a bit daft in thinking that I have the time to write a blog of my own. I'll try. I want to. From time to time I just feel that an industry or search engine development needs a comment. Whereas this blog is not the place I spleen daily foo, this blog will be the personal-professional vent for search engine and search engine optimisation news and views.
Just as I find it ironic that some people seem to have 16 hours a day to crawl the forums and update their blogs I also find it worrying at how often I disagree with what's been said and how often cliques seem to perpetuate status and standing. I suspect I'll skirt with controversy here.
That said, let's get this important disclaimer in; this blog represents my views and not the views of the company I work for. Personal views, such as those you'll find in this blog, change, evolve, twist and change. I reserve the right to flip-flop, u-turn, reserve or bathe in sea changes.
I'm also new to Blogger. Here's my first discovery; the Firefox version of Google's toolbar does not spellcheck properly in the "Edit HTML" of the Posting screen. The input window turns blue but no errors are found and you need to click the ABC button to disable the effect (rather than being able to mouse-click on the form and select "Stop" from there.
Here's the next discovery: if you start spell checking in "Compose" view, flick to "Edit Html" without turning the spellcheck off then the Html inherits all the style commands from the toolbar, going back to "Compose" hardwires these changes into the actual blog post.
The next step for me is to move the blog to a new domain.
