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October 30, 2009

Google Crawls RSS Feeds to Discover New Web Pages; AdSense for Feeds Now Available in Blogger

Google recently launched a new feature that uses RSS and Atom feeds to discover new web pages. This helps Google index new webpages faster than traditional methods.

As a result, you'll want to make sure that your robots.txt file allows Googlebot to crawl your feeds. To learn more about robots.txt from Google's standpoint, click here.

In other feed news related to Google, AdSense for Feeds is now available directly in Blogger. You can find the integration under the "Monetize" tab in the Blogger dashboard.

AdSense for Feeds allows bloggers to make money from advertisements that are included in RSS feeds. This is important because not all RSS readers click through to visit a site, where bloggers can make money off of display ads.

Blogger is a blogging platform that was acquired by Google in 2003.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 2:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

October 23, 2009

7 Google Updates: Custom Search, AdWords API, Maps, Search Appliance and More

Google had another busy week pushing out updates. That's really no surprise considering Apple released product refreshes and Microsoft released Windows 7. Google hasn't let any major update from any competitor go by without their own news and this week was no different.

We've already covered Google getting a deal with Twitter (similar to Bing's deal with Twitter) as well as a new social search experiment set up in Google Labs.

Here are 7 updates that are slightly minor but you'll still want to know about:

Custom Search is now available for mobile search experiences on smartphone and higher-end devices. Google will even host your mobile-optimized custom search pages for you, or you can host it on your mobile site.

AdWords API has a new version that includes asynchronous calls, keyword and placement ideas, and a location extensions preview.

Google Maps for Mobile has introduced layers for Blackberry users.

Google Search Appliance, an enterprise search server, released an update that includes a Self-Learning Scorer.

Google Friend Connect has a new Wordpress plugin.

Webmaster Central has new instructions for verifying a Blogger blog in Webmaster Tools.

Google Reader added Popular Items and Personalized Ranking features.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

June 1, 2009

Google's Blogger Makes Search Box Available to All Users

Google's blogging platform Blogger has taken its Search Box feature out of "Blogger in Draft" and made it available to all users. The Search Box is a gadget that enables readers to search a blog's posts, web pages linked from the blog, a blog's lists, and link lists.

Search Box automatically detects new posts that it can incorporate into the search results. The gadget also picks up on a blog's style and colors. Search Box uses AJAX Search APIs to create a tight look that integrates well with the blog. Custom Search helps serve up the results.

In order to add the Search Box...

Log into Blogger
Select the blog you wish to add the Search Box to
Click on "Layouts"
Go to "Add a Widget"
Choose "Search Box

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 7:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 15, 2009

Blogger Gets in Microblogging Game with New Mobile and Email Publishing Options

If you have a blog on Blogger, you can now publish via SMS, MMS and Email on your mobile phone. This can essentially turn Blogger into a microblogging platform, if you want it to be.

Actually, the great thing about this update is that it allows your Blogger blog to be both traditional blogging mixed with microblogging. Not that you couldn't do that before. But the mobile phone options give it that "on-the-go" feel. To set up SMS/MMS

1. Go to your Blogger dashboard 2. Click the phone icon next to the blog you wish to use the option on 3. Blogger will show you a claim code 4. Text the claim code to Blogger at 256447 (or MMS it to go@blogger.com) 5. You'll receive a verification code on your phone. 6. Type verification code back into Blogger. You're all set

To set up Email posting

1. Go to your Blogger dashboard 2. Click the envelope icon next to the blog you wish to use the option on 3. You'll be prompted to create an email address for your blog. 4. Email the address whenever you wish to publish to the blog. (If you attach photos to the email, they will be inserted between the post's title and body.)

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 27, 2009

Google Adds Friend Connect to Blogger

Users of Google's blogging product, Blogger, can now add Friend Connect to their blogs. The feature enables them to incorporate social networking to their blog. Now, that might seem a bit redundant. Isn't a blog already social with comments?

Yes, but blogging isn't a comprehensive social community. Granted, Friend Connect isn't comprehensive, but it's a simple way for those who don't have the time or resources to build out a full-on social networking site.

Friend Connect is also a social media marketing tool. Users share their activity with others, so Blogger users might get new readers when it's noted that Friend Connect users are reading them.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

November 7, 2008

Google's Blogger Launches New Reactions Feature

Blogger has released a cool new feature that lets readers offer quick responses. It's called Reactions, and it allows bloggers to create a variety of responses for their readers to choose. One possible implementation of the feature looks like this:

You're not limited to "LOL" or "Fail." You can set your own annotations:

To use the feature, go to Layout > Page Elements. Click the "Edit" link under the Blog Posts element. Check the Reactions box and enter words, separated by a comma. Hit Save and you're ready to go.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

October 23, 2008

Blogger Releases Two Updates Regarding iGoogle and Commenting

Here's a couple of updates that you Blogger bloggers should be happy to learn about. The first is the ability to post directly from a new Blogger widget in iGoogle.

Here's what it looks like:

The second is the ability to allow comments directly from a blog post's page, to which I scream HALLELUJAH. If you've ever commented on a Blogger blog post, you know you have to go to a separate page. But now, Blogger bloggers can choose a setting that allows commenting on the same page as the post. Blogger users, I implore you to do just that.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 30, 2008

Cutts Talks Spam While Obama Supporters Flag Blogspot Blogs

Matt Cutts is addressing the ever-present topic of spam again, only this time it's on the Official Google Blog. Cutts wrote about coming across spam links in the search results. He says this doesn't happen nearly as often as it used to, thanks to Google's anti-spam metrics.

One of those metrics is data from search logs. Many have worried what Google does with the data collects, and Cutts assures that data such as IP and cookie information is used to help improve the search results.

"The IP and cookie information is important for helping us apply this method only to searches that are from legitimate users as opposed to those that were generated by bots and other false searches. For example, if a bot sends the same queries to Google over and over again, those queries should really be discarded before we measure how much spam our users see. All of this--log data, IP addresses, and cookie information--makes your search results cleaner and more relevant."

But Cutts is also aware that the war against spam continues on:

"If you think webspam is a solved problem, think again. Last year Google faced a rash of webspam on Chinese domains in our index. Some spammers were purchasing large amounts of cheap .cn domains and stuffing them with misspellings and porn phrases. Savvy users may remember reading a few blogs about it, but most regular users never even noticed. The reason that a typical searcher didn't notice the odd results is that Google identified the .cn spam and responded with a fast-tracked engineering project to counteract that type of spam attack. Without our logs data to help identify the speed and scope of the problem, many more Google users might have been affected by this attack."

Another unsolved webspam problem - that was not addressed by Cutts - is letting humans in on the reporting of spam. Over at Blogspot, supporters of Presidential candidate Barack Obama have reportedly been flagging anti-obama blogs as "spam." As a result, several of the blogs, including ones created by Hilary Clinton supporters, have been frozen.

Of course, this problem is experienced in the 'paid links debate' as well. Google accepts anonymous reports about paid links, which is an easy way for competitors to attempt to flag each other out of the results.

What do you think of Cutts comments? Do they reduce your fears about Google's data collection? Should Google let third parties flag sites? Let us know in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 9, 2007

Implications of Google Custom Search Blog Deletion

Boy this is frightening. Yesterday Google Blogoscoped reported about the Google Custom Search blog being hacked. After this was discovered, Google sent an update to Philipp Lenssen (who runs Google Blogoscoped) that said the following:

Whoops! We accidentally classified ourselves as spam, and our ever-perceptive Blogger settings caught us. The Custom Search Blog has since been restored, and we're taking steps to ensure this doesn't happen with other Google blogs in the future. Other Blogger users can make sure this doesn't happen to them by reporting any problems to the Blogger support team via the Blogger Help Center at http://www.blogger.com/problem.g. We can then investigate.

It's frightening because it shows you how fragile Spam detection algorithms are. How could this happen that the blog was accidentally flagged as spam? The people working on this blog work at Google! I am willing to stipulate that they were not deliberately trying to game Blogger in any fashion, or for that matter the Google search engine.

As someone that focuses a lot of energy on building web site traffic by organic means, and as a blogger, I have to admit that I am very concerned about this. It's a real eye opener. Like many of you, I have read the various forums out there filled with people complaining about how they have been mistreated by Google's search engine.

They complain about how they have a great site, and have been banned from the index, or hit by some algorithmic penalty. I have also helped such sites emerge from such penalties, and get a fresh new lease on life. I always feel bad for these people because it's a crummy feeling to hvae your investment get flushed down the toilet.

However, nearly all the time when I get the chance to look more closely at the situation there appear to be reasons why the problem could be happening. Up until now, I had hoped that it was possible to have a gold standard approach that was immune to the risk of such things. I guess I was wrong. If Blogger can flag a product of Google as spam, then there are few places that are truly safe.

I would really like to see a statement from Google as to why the Google Custom Search blog was classified as spam in the first place. If I hear anything I will update this post with that info.

Posted by at 10:38 AM | Permalink

December 22, 2006

Google Upgrades Blogger With Privacy Features & More

Now you can restrict reader access to your blog, with new privacy settings to allow you to create a 'subscriber list' of sorts to any blog hosted at Blogspot. The default settings for Blogger allow anyone to read your posts, but the new "Blog Readers" tab allows bloggers to only allow readers they choose (via email address). Also included in the Blogger feature update is the ability to "label" posts, which is essentially "tagging" or categorizing posts. Other additions include new templates and the ability to add photos more easily.

You can read more about the upgrades at the Google Blog.

Posted by Elisabeth Osmeloski at 11:55 AM | Permalink

October 26, 2006

Google Helping Racism By Refusing To Take Down Hosted Blogs

The Inquirer reports that Google refuses to tackle racist blogs hosted on Google's Blogger platform. These blogs have racist and neo-Nazi content on them from organizations based in New Zealand and Australia. Brian Stokes, co-founder of FightDemBack!, said that most of the time when his organization reports these types of sites to Angelfire and Tripod, he gets a response. But Google has not responded to his requests and flags. There are more details on this at the Sydney Morning Herald.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:38 AM | Permalink

October 12, 2006

Google's Blogspot.com Down, Blogger Content Inaccessible

It seems like most of the morning, Google's Blogspot service that hosts Blogger blogs has been down. For example, I have been trying to access any of the various official Google blogs such as the main one here, and they all time out or return a 500 server error. The same is true for the Google Press Blog, as well as any site using the blogspot.com domain, it seems. FYI - it seems that www.blogger.com is also down.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:29 AM | Permalink

October 9, 2006

Official Google Blog Gets Hacked After Message On Security

The Official Google Blog was hacked over the weekend, happening embarrassingly after Google had just posted about how seriously it takes security. It's also follows a pseudo-hack earlier this year, when someone else took over the Google Blog when the company accidentally deleted it.

The hack was covered in various places. Google Blogoscoped has a good write-up on what was initially posted (and screenshot here), an anonymous message saying that Google's click-to-call project had been cancelled:

After concientiously considering, Google has decided not to continue with Google Click-to-call project. The project has been in the media on last days because of the notice of Google agreement with e-Bay. We finally consider click-to-call agreement with e-Bay a monopolistic aproach that would damage small companies in the CRM area.

It felt like a hack to many, certainly to me as well, and I posted the same to Google Blogoscoped:

Got to be a hack. Especially notice what's currently tops on the Google blog, a post all about how "Google takes security very seriously and designs all of its services and applications to protect your privacy and data security." This almost certainly is someone reading how "we keep the bad guys out of our systems" and thumbing Google's nose to show nope, they don't.

That post from the Google Blog about security says in full:

Most readers of this blog are familiar with our mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Maintaining the trust of our users and ensuring a positive experience using our products and services is paramount to our ability to accomplish our mission. As a result, Google takes security very seriously and designs all of its services and applications to protect your privacy and data security. Behind the scenes of these efforts is the Google Security Team. We keep the bad guys out of our systems and have brought you features like the anti-phishing extension in Google Toolbar and warnings about Internet malware. As part of our commitment to security, we're putting up some additional help content to let users and security researchers know how to quickly contact us on these issues. We've learned that when security is done right, it's done as a community, and this includes everybody: the people who use Google services (thank you all!), the software developers who make our applications, and the external security enthusiasts who keep us on our toes. These combined efforts go a long way toward making the Internet safer and more secure. Please visit our new security page and feel free to contact us anytime at security@google.com.

The post is incredibly ironic given what's now posted at the top of the blog:

A bug in Blogger enabled an unauthorized user to make a fake post on the Google Blog last night, claiming that we've discontinued our AdWords click-to-call test. The bug was fixed quickly and the post removed. As for the click-to-call test, it is progressing on schedule, and we're pleased with the results thus far.

A bug, also known as a security problem. So much for that trust Google was hoping to maintain with its users. It also happens ironically after publicity about Google shifting attention to improving existing projects, rather than rolling out new ones.

Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped pointed out what a nice visual contrast the two posts make and posted a screenshot. I couldn't help doing the same:

In March, Google deleted its own blog accidentally, allowing someone else the ability to claim the old Google URL and keep the blog running for a short time outside of Google's control. Official Google Blog Deleted, Blogger Registers googleblog.blogspot.com has more about that.

Finally, the hacked post was published by someone calling themselves Maximal. I found a post from another Maximal on Google Groups asking for help recently with the Google Data API.

Hi, I am making tests with Google Data API to publish my posts. The problem is ... my posts are being published into "the Honourable Dr Mantombazana Tshabalala-Msimang South Africa's Minister of Health" blog (I don't have to say I am not the minister of health of South Africa).

Any help before Honourable Minister of Health of South Africa would speak with Interpol would be apreciated.

Perhaps related?

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:16 AM | Permalink

August 11, 2006

Chinese Government Opens Up Blogger Again

CIO reports that after three years, the Chinese government has opened up access to Google's Blogger. Why did they reopen access? Well, no one really knows. Maybe it is because restricting access to Blogger won't stop people from starting blogs with other software?

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:46 AM | Permalink

March 28, 2006

Official Google Blog Deleted, Blogger Registers googleblog.blogspot.com

Back in April 2004, Google launched their blog at googleblog.blogspot.com. But somehow, in the past few hours, that blog has been completely deleted from the Blogger servers, and users are instead seeing a "Not Found. The requested URL was not found on this server. Please visit the Blogger homepage or the Blogger Knowledge Base for further assistance."

When tempted with a vacant blogspot URL with a PR9, one blogger did what many are probably very envious of... register the googleblog.blogspot.com blog URL.

Now, those who have the official Google Blog on their RSS feeds, saw an entry pop up a few minutes ago with:

Google, fix your blog pleeasssee!

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