"Location", Used In Posts, Breaks The Blog Feed

We're seeing a few problem reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue, mentioning problems with the blog feed.

I try to claim my blog in BlogLovin, but they tell me that my feed is invalid!

My subscribers stopped getting my posts by email!!

Both BlogLovin, and the FeedBurner "Follow by Email" service, depend upon the blog posts newsfeed.

In any problem which involves a blog newsfeed, I use the W3C Feed Validator, to look for obvious problems.

In some cases, when validating the blog posts feed using the W3C Feed Validator, I get a cryptic error message.

Undefined entry element: georss:box [help]
... 089035564831022 144.84375-90 -20.390625 30.24 ...

The "Location" feature, in Blogger, lets you geo track your posts.

It's easy to add Location detail, to each post.

Retrieving the blog posts newsfeed as text, and searching on the mysterious "georss:box", I eventually find a snippet of code.

<georss:featurename>North·Melbourne,·Victoria,·Australia</georss:featurename><georss:point>-45.089035564831022·144.84375</georss:point><georss:box>-90·-20.390625·30.243080935168976·-49.921875</georss:box>

The snippet containing "georss:box" is part of an individual post - and after some searching, I find the Title and URL of the post.

Using the URL, I'm able to view the post - and at the end of the post, I see the culprit.

Location: North Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Apparently, the Location option in post editor, which lets us geotag our posts, adds this mysterious, and poisonous "georss:box".

It looks like the mysterious entry "georss:box" is not accepted by either BlogLovin or FeedBurner.

http://www.feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2FWashingtonSpeaks

A post containing Location generates a "georss" entry in the feed - and this is a problem.

If you want to claim your blog, in BlogLovin - or provide blog updates using FeedBurner "Follow by Email" - you can't publish posts using the Location option. Until Blogger Engineering modifies the Location option, that's the simplest solution.

Add A Custom Redirect, If You Change A Post URL

When you rename a blog, the most that you can do, to keep the old URL useful, is to setup a stub post , with a clickable link to the new URL. Yo! The blog is now at xxxxxxx.blogspot.com!! Blogger forbids gateway blogs, and similar blog to blog redirections . When you rename a post, you can setup a custom redirect - and automatically redirect your readers to the post, under its new URL. You should take advantage of this option, if you change a post URL.

Referer Spam Is Annoying - And, It's Persistent

Recently, we've seen a few blog owners who are curious about odd trends in their Stats displays. My numbers seem to go up steadily for a while, then drop. Then, they go up again, for a while, then drop again. Rises and falls in traffic are normal. You'll never have the same number of people, viewing your blog, constantly. During some days and some hours, our readers are going to be elsewhere, and not viewing our blogs.

Jump Break Is Visible Only In An Index Page

Some blog owners are unsure what a Jump Break looks like, when applied to their blogs. Occasionally, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , we see the confusion. Where's the Jump Break? or I added a Jump Break to several posts, but it never shows up! When asked for a screen print of what they're seeing, they may provide a image of the post, in the Post Editor Preview window - or possibly, the published post, but in post page view.

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