Blogger Blogs Redirecting To "blogrolling.com"

This week, we're seeing a new small flood of complaints about redirecting blogs, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken.

When I try to view my blog, I am being redirected to http://rpc.blogrolling.com!

Many blog owners have forgotten the past, and the accessories they installed on their blogs, long ago. Sometimes - as now - the past can return, to haunt you.

Several years ago, Blogger added the very popular BlogList gadget, that lets us showcase the latest updates from our friends blogs, on our blogs. Before then, bloglists were maintained by the various blog owners, using a variety of accessories. One very popular blog listing accessory was provided by BlogRolling, a free third party service.

After Blogger added the BlogList as a built-in Blogger accessory, BlogRolling lost its customer base. Almost a year ago, BlogRolling stopped serving bloglist updates. Recently, the "blogrolling.com" domain, as with many unneeded domains, went out of service.

A Who.Is log shows the sad details.

REGISTRY WHOIS FOR BLOGROLLING.COM

Registrar: TUCOWS.COM CO.
Whois Server: whois.tucows.com
Referral URL: http://domainhelp.opensrs.net
Status: clientDeleteProhibited, clientTransferProhibited, clientUpdateProhibited

Expiration Date: 2012-01-03
Creation Date: 2002-01-03
Last Update Date: 2011-08-31

Name Servers:
    parking1.mdnsservice.com
    parking2.mdnsservice.com

Now, people are seeing their blogs, which contain HTML gadgets that use code provided by BlogRolling, redirected to a "parked page" of advertising.

The bottom line here is that there's no hijacking, just code - from a dead service - that was left behind, on a few Blogger blogs. Resolving the problem generally won't be too complicated - just identify and remove the broken gadgets, that redirect to "blogrolling.com".

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