Search Engines, And Private Blogs

Not every blog owner realises the relationships between private blogs, and search engine indexing.

Some blog owners think that private blogs can't be indexed, by the search engine robots. Given the way private blogs work, search engine access is not directly restricted - even though indexing activity is impeded.

People are prevented from viewing a private blog, only because Blogger displays the private blog interstitial in front of the blog display.

This blog is open to invited readers only

It doesn't look like you have been invited to read this blog. If you think this is a mistake, you might want to contact the blog author and request an invitation.

Other than the presence of that display, access to the blog is not affected. This detail becomes important, for some potential readers who are accessing the Internet through some Local Area Networks.

Search engines are not directly affected by the private blog status - though there are interesting details.

• The blog description, when indexed, will contain the text of the interstitial notice.
• Private blogs do not publish newsfeeds - and with newsfeeds used to facilitate indexing, the indexing process is not as consistent as with public blogs.
• The dashboard Privacy setting, which generates an entry in the "robots.txt" file, is advisory only, to search engine robots.

The interstitial notice is authoritative to people, when viewing the blog.

The notice does not block robots. Robots are stopped only when they voluntarily accept the relevant settings in "robots.txt".


The text content of the interstitial advice will replace the blog description, in SERP displays.

This blog is open to invited readers only

Without an actual blog description, potential blog readers won't feel very encouraged to view the blog. Even when clicking on the SERP entry, the would be blog reader is still taken to the interstitial, and goes no farther.

This blog is open to invited readers only

Private blogs do not publish newsfeeds. Since the newsfeed provides the Blogger equivalent of the sitemap, a typical private Blogger blog has no sitemap - and search engine indexing activity is not as regular.

The settings in the "robots.txt" file, which specifies bots and access, is not authoritative. Acceptance of the "robots.txt" settings is left to the discretion of each different robot - and a robot which does not observe the settings can access any website.

A private blog can be indexed - though without free access by readers to a private blog, there will be less links referencing the blog - and less indirect search engine activity.

Less links referencing the blog leads to less indexing, by the search engines. Less indexing leads to less entries in SERPs, poorer SERP positioning - and relative lack of success when using search engine cache, to search the blog.

With a private blog, you'll be much more successful using a direct blog search.

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Google+ Circles Is Replacing Following / Google Friend Connect

Those of you who have been Following this blog, in the past, may have recently noted a new gadget in the sidebar.

Just below the "Follow Me" gadget, you'll see "+Follow Me". The latter gadget looks the same as the former, but has some subtle differences. Some differences are visible, others not so visible. And some differences are not visible to the eye - but will still affect your access to this blog.

The Google+ Circles gadget, which on this blog is labeled "+Follow Me", appears similar to the Following / Google Friend Connect "Follow Me" gadget - but appearances can be very misleading.

The larger pictures are one obvious difference - but that's not the most significant difference. Some difference need to be discussed now, rather than later, for maximum benefit.

Following / Google Friend Connect lets your acquaintances Follow a single blog. I have several blogs, and a different group of Followers for each blog. The Google+ Circles gadget shows everybody in all of your publicly visible circles, merged together. The merged concept may, or may not, be to your liking.

With Following / Google Friend Connect, your Followers can use email, or any number of newsfeed clients, to read the complete content of your blog - including each complete post, if you setup the blog feed that way. Google+ Circle members can read a snippet of any blog post intentionally Shared, in their stream - but will have to click on the link to the blog, in the snippet, to read the entire blog post. If you have read this far, that's what you have already done.

Following / Google Friend Connect works best for public blogs - and supports a reader audience of unlimited size. A Google+ Circle, likewise, supports a reader audience of unlimited size.

With a properly setup Google+ Circle, and a Blogger blog with a list of designated readers - and your readers properly accepting the emailed membership invitation, up to 99 of your designated readers can Follow your blog. As before, the limit for private blog distribution, as for any team blog, is still 99 members.

Anybody Following a blog, using the stream of any author of the blog, will see a snippet of each post Shared in their stream. To read the complete post, they will have to click on the link in the snippet. With a private blog, the reader will have to be a blog member, to read the complete post.

Many publicly visible Blogger blogs have Following communities which vastly exceed my 4700 member population (my "Follow Me" gadget, as of April 2013) - and the possibility of losing those communities will not be willingly accepted by everybody. The integration of Following with the newsfeed subscription - and with the dashboard Reading List - is not automatic with Google+ Circles.

A blog with multiple authors (aka "team blog") will have either a Google+ Circles gadget for only one author - or multiple Circles gadgets, to fairly let people subscribe to the various authors Google+ streams. Neither solution will be exactly equal to the Following / GFC blog feed subscription - especially if the various team members are similar to me, and my range of interests.

Right now, it appears that a blog can have just one Circles gadget. How team membership blogs will use Google+ is another question to ask.

Similar to the team blog, we may wish to consider the multiple interests of each blog owner. I am one person, with a number of interests. People who have intentionally subscribed to the newsfeed from this blog, and are specifically interested in my blog about Blogger blogs, may not be extremely interested in my blog about cooking - nor in my blog about jokes, pranks, and miscellaneous ramblings. Unfortunately, if you Follow my Google+ stream, you'll get a bit of each subject.

Again, the Google+ Circles gadget appears to contain the total Followers for one person, for all interests of that one person. I have not yet found a tool that will allow me to analyse the interests of each of my Followers, and to accurately determine the specific areas of overlapping, between my own personal interests and theirs. It will be impossible for many blog owners to keep an accurate Circle complement, and segregate each circle according to interest, so they may Share only relevant material with the specific members of each different Circle.

As the Google+ Circles gadget evolves, some significant improvements - and some compromises - will be required. Like the Internet, Blogger, and Google, are constantly evolving. This may require compromises by many Blogger blog owners.

We now have a rollup discussion, where each blog owner is asked to provide their thoughts about the above described issues - and possibly, others that concern you. Anybody who experienced the Blogger GUI upgrade of several years ago may, from experience, realise how much better off we may all be, with these issues discussed now - rather than later.

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Without The PostID, A Deleted Post Is Not Easily Recovered

If you delete a post (page) in your blog, it's a simple matter to recover the post - as long as you know the PostID. Unfortunately, once the post is gone, finding the post (page) id is not a simple matter - especially for those who would typically delete a page or post without planning. Blogger does not provide the PostID in any list, that we might save, periodically, to reference later.

The task of retrieving a deleted page or post is particularly frustrating, for owners of private blogs. Private blogs probably won't be cached, nor do they publish a blog feed - and without either a cache entry, or a feed reference, the PostID for a deleted post is not easily obtained.

Right now, once you delete a page or post, in a private blog, you're out of luck - unless you have cached the blog on your own computer. Retrieving from local cache is not an issue to be productively discussed in Blogger Support, as it is going to be as individual as your computer may be.

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How Not To Make Your Blog Private

Blog owners have been asking, for years, how to protect their blogs against viewing by undesired or unknown readers.

How do I password protect my blog?

When told that Blogger password protection involves membership invitations, accepted using a Blogger Google account, some would be private blog owners decline the suggestion.

That's too complicated for my readers! Can't I just give everybody a password?

But Blogger does not use common passwords.

Some blog owners, who are technically astute, find add on template code, provided by third parties - which demands a password, in a popup window, to continue. This is where their problems start.

The addition of third party supplied JavaScript code, to our blogs, has always been a dodgy process. With third party JavaScript code used to provide password protection against unknown readers, this is even more hazardous to your blog.

This month, we have a blog owner who installed password protection code in his blog template - and subsequently found his blog locked.

I received email saying that my blog has been removed, and has been marked as spam. The email is as follows:

Your blog has been reviewed and confirmed as in violation of our Terms of Service for: MALICIOUS_JAVASCRIPT. In accordance to these terms, we've removed the blog and the URL is no longer accessible.

Can you please review and unlock my blog?

But the story does not end there. Subsequent review of the blog was denied, by Blogger Support.

Your password prompt is not dismissable - and forces users to close their entire browser session, as the Cancel button does nothing. This is malicious behavior, and prevents anyone one on our team from even reviewing your blog content.

This leaves the blog owner with a deleted / locked blog, and no chance of getting the blog back.

Besides the potential threat above, which becomes actual only after spam classification detects the add-on code as malicious, any security expert will recognise two reasons why this solution is worthless.

1. JavaScript code can be blocked, by any reader with a well implemented security policy.
2. If not blocked, anybody can view source code and find the "password" right there, in plain sight.

This "solution" is therefore worthless for two reasons.

1. It is risky.
2. It does not work.

Why risk loss of your blog, for a risky solution that does not work? There's only one way to protect your blog from unknown readers.

1. Send each would be blog reader a membership invitation, using the Permissions wizard.
2. Instruct each reader to open and accept the invitation, using any preferred Blogger account.

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Blogger Accounts, And Domains Based On Google Apps

We've know, for a while, of the downsides of having a Blogger account that's based on an email address that's provided by a Google Apps based domain. Some people are unknowingly using email that is based on Google Apps administered service - and they are not even the administrators.

A few would be blog owners - or members (of a private or team blog) - are using Google Apps administered domains for their email. This detail never becomes relevant to them, until they try to join or setup a Blogger blog.

When I click on the invite link, and try to set up a new Google account, I get the message.

Blogger has not been enabled by the administrator of the domain xxxxxxx.edu.

What do I do, now?

When you are a prospective blog member or owner, and you are using a domain that you control and own - and are able to access the Google Apps administrator account for the domain - you may be able to enable the Blogger service, for the domain. If you are merely one user of the domain, where your email service is hosted, the situation won't be that simple.

If someone else controls the email domain, where you need to use Blogger, you have 2 choices.

• Convince the domain administrators to enable the Blogger service, in their domain.
• Setup a web based email account, outside your current service.
  • Recover control of the blog, using the current email address.
  • Transfer control of the blog, to a new Blogger account.

Neither solution is ideal.

Not all domain administrators, even for those domains which use GMail services for non "gmail.com" email addresses, believe Blogger blogs to be an essential service. Some believe blog publication to be a frivolous or insecure activity, and will intentionally block use of Blogger in their domains - possibly mandated by a Corporate Security Policy. These administrators are unlikely to attend to your need with any amount of urgency.

Some educational institutions or corporations, which are now using GMail in their private domains, may also consider use of non domain, or web based, email as suspicious activity. This may also present a challenge to you, when you need to use Blogger.

You'll have to make a personal decision, when you are faced with an email account that does not permit Blogger accounts. Just understand the possible reasons why the choice is necessary.

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Confusion Over Community Building Accessories - Blog Feeds, EMail, And Following

A few blog owners become confused over the various community building options offered for our blogs. We see the queries in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken.

How do I get a list of my Followers email addresses?

and

Why don't my email subscribers show up in my Followers gadget?

and

How do I know how many people subscribe to my feed?

These questions all come from people who don't understand the differences between blog feed subscribers, email subscribers, and Followers.

There are various community building accessories available for our Blogger blogs.

• Blog feed subscriptions.
• Email subscriptions.
• Following (aka "Google Friend Connect").
• Google+.

If you have a private blog, with designated readers, not all of these options will be as useful. Neither blog feed subscriptions, nor email subscriptions (which use the blog feed) will work for private blogs.

The native Blogger blog feed subscriptions, and email subscriptions, are pretty basic.

• People subscribe to the blog feed using any of dozens of various industry standard newsfeed subscription products. You can't count, or enumerate, these subscribers.
• You provide up to 10 email subscriptions, using BlogSend. You'll have a list of these (up to) 10 email recipients. Only BlogSend based email is available, to members of private blogs.

You can enhance the possibilities for both blog feed subscriptions, and email subscriptions, by using a FeedBurner enhanced feed.

You can make it easy for your readers to subscribe to your blog, using standard Blogger / Google gadgets. Look in the sidebar for this blog, for the orange "XML" icon. Beneath that, you will see "Subscribe to The Real Blogger Status by Email", which provides a link to the FeedBurner Email Subscription form. Next, you see the "Subscribe To" gadget, which is the Blogger supplied "Subscription Links" gadget, installed using the Layout "Add a Gadget" wizard.

Even with FeedBurner involved, all accessories won't be the same.

After you add a FeedBurner Email Subscription to your blog, don't get confused over the terminology - someone who Follows your blog using a FeedBurner Email Subscription won't be counted, or treated, as one who Follows using Following / Google Friend Connect.

• People who Follow using FeedBurner Email will not get their picture in the Friend Connect gadget.
• FeedBurner will give you a count of people who Follow, using Email.
• Following / Google Friend Connect will give you a count of people who Follow / Join your blog.
• Some people may do both - but don't expect this to be normal.

If you redirect the blog feed to FeedBurner, you can see statistics about everybody who reads your blog in their newsfeed reader. The FeedBurner statistics will be different from the Following / Google Friend Connect count, and from the FeedBurner Email subscriber count and list.

• People who subscribe to the FeedBurner feed using "Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)" will read the blog feed in their newsfeed readers - not in their email.
• People who read the redirected blog feed using their newsfeed readers will be counted in the FeedBurner statistics, but they will not provide their email address - so they won't be listed in the FeedBurner "Subscriber Management" list.
• Both people who Follow / Join the blog, using Following / Google Friend Connect, and people who use the "Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)" link will be redirected to the FeedBurner feed, and contribute to the FeedBurner statistics.

So enjoy the convenience to you, and to your potential Followers - but understand what they, and you, get - and don't get. You'll have up to three different counts, to consider.

• FeedBurner Email Subscribers. You can get an email address list, of email subscribers.
• FeedBurner Newsfeed Subscribers. You can get FeedBurner Statistics, about newsfeed subscribers.
• Following / Friend Connect Members. You can see pictures and profiles of Members, who do not Follow anonymously.

Finally, people can follow you using your stream, in Google+. If you Share your posts when you publish, your posts will go into your Google+ stream, and be visible to anybody Following you there. Sometime in the future, Google+ Circles may replace Following / Friend Connect.

If you include a Google+ Followers gadget on your blog, your Followers may get their pictures on your blog, similar to Following / Google Friend Connect. And you can use Google+, and restricted Google+ Circles, with a private blog - an option not available using the blog feed.

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