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Attention Canadian Blog Owners: The URL Of Your Blog Is "BlogSpot.com" - NOT "BlogSpot.ca"

We have a number of blog owners, apparently located in Canada, who have been sharing their "blogspot.com" published Blogger blogs, using the "blogspot.ca" alias.

This week, two major services - FaceBook and McAfee Anti-Malware, have decided that links mentioning "blogspot.ca" are not trustworthy. Use of the Country Code aliases - of which "blogspot.ca" is simply one of many - has provided potential for confusion, for some time.

What some blog owners may not realise is that only the online viewers of the blog (and the owners, viewing their own blogs) see the "blogspot.ca" alias - and only when they are located in Canada. At the same time, people in Malaysia see their blog (and other blogs, published to "blogspot.com") as "blogspot.my", people in Mexico see their blog as "blogspot.mx", etc.

Thanks to the use of the canonical URL, specified in the blog header, the search engines index "blogspot.com" published Blogger blogs, consistently, as "blogspot.com".

It's possible that FaceBook and McAfee have tightened down on their link validation criteria. Noting that the "blogspot.ca" alias is not indexed by the search engines, they may simply be objecting to people posting links that have no reputation.

Multiple people posting links without reputation could be seen as an organised link spamming campaign - and FaceBook has reacted. Why FaceBook (social networking), and McAfee (anti-malware), seem to have changed their criteria simultaneously, remains to be seen.

For immediate concern, we see many Canadian blog owners with massive amounts of previously posted FaceBook links, pointing to "blogspot.ca". Unfortunately, this may be an issue which the blog owners need to discuss with FaceBook.

Comments

Legacy said…
The simple solution is the one I have been using since the advent of the CC aliases. When going to my blog to extract post page links, I go to myblog.blogspot.com/ncr.

That way, all the URLs within the blog are canonical.
Scott Simpson said…
It'd also have been swell for Google to communicate some of this background info to Blogger users. I think most of us discovered the ever-changing country domains by accident in recent weeks. Most of my blog stuff is hosted under custom dot-coms, so I haven't been burned by this so far....that I know of.
I tested the simple solution that Legacy2000 said, I went to myblogspot.com/ncr. But the blog became not canonical, because it was prompt or automaticaly rewiritten in old adress with country code of *blogspot.jp How can I solve it otherweise? Thank you.
Your Shigi
Nitecruzr said…
Shigi,

Blogger in Japan has a problem, right now. What you are seeing is subject to how they fix their problem.

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