The Search Engines, And Web Sites With Dual Addresses

I've written separately about a problem that the search engines might have with possibly duplicated content. If you're not careful, and Blogger wasn't looking out for your interests, your blog (web site) could get a duplicated content penalty from the search engines, for your possible use of label searches to index your blog. Yet, there may be another way for your blog to get a duplicated content penalty from the search engines.

Your blog, as published by Blogger, comes with 2 aliases - "yourblog.blogspot.com" and "www.yourblog.blogspot.com", or maybe "yourdomain.com" and "www.yourdomain.com". If not managed properly, these aliases may cause the search engines to see duplicated content.

To properly manage this dual personality, you use the Google Webmaster Tools "Preferred domain" wizard. For a properly verified website, go to "Site configuration", then to "Settings".

Under "Preferred domain" for a BlogSpot published blog, you have 3 choices

Don't set a preferred domain
Display URLs as www.yourblog.blogspot.com
Display URLs as yourblog.blogspot.com

Similarly, Under "Preferred domain" for a custom domain published blog, you have 3 choices

Don't set a preferred domain
Display URLs as www.yourdomain.com
Display URLs as yourdomain.com

Further explanation is provided, behind the "Learn mode" link.

The preferred domain is the one that you would like used to index your site's pages. If you specify your preferred domain as http://www.example.com and we find a link to your site that is formatted as http://example.com , we'll treat that link as if it was http://www.example.com . In addition, we'll take your preference into account when displaying URLs in our search results. It may take some time for changes to be reflected in our index.

Learn more about setting a preferred domain

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What's The URL Of My Blog?

We see the plea for help, periodically I need the URL of my blog, so I can give it to my friends. Help! Who's buried in Grant's Tomb, after all? No Chuck, be polite. OK, OK. The title of this blog is "The Real Blogger Status", and the title of this post is "What's The URL Of My Blog?".

Where's The Dashboard?

We see this confusion, a couple times a week, in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? . Where is the dashboard? In the Classic Blogger GUI, the display which contained the "Blog List" (at the top), and the "Reading List" (at the bottom) was labeled "Dashboard". Many people also called the "Settings" / "Template" screens for the various blogs, linked from the Blog List, the dashboard. The New Blogger GUI has no page with the label - and no links "To The Dashboard". The Navbar (another unlabeled feature) has two links - "Design" and "New Post" - which lead to different dashboard sections, when you are appropriately logged in to Blogger . And, the "B" logo at the far left of the navbar will, similarly, take you to the Blog List / Reading List.

Embedded Comments And Main Page View

The option to display comments, embedded below the post, was made a blog option relatively recently. This was a long requested feature - and many bloggers added it to their blogs, as soon as the option was presented to us. Some blog owners like this feature so much, that they request it to be visible when the blog is opened, in main page view. I would like all comments, and the comment form, to be shown underneath the relevant post, automatically, for everyone to read without clicking on the number of comments link. And this is not how embedded comments work.

The Real Blogger Status

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