The Real Blogger Status

We see an occasional sign of confusion, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger . How do I let my readers search my entire blog? or Why does my Search not find all of my posts? Both of these questions - and more - are seen, because not every blog owner is aware of the limitations, and possibilities, of each search technique.

Occasionally, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger , we see a blog owner who wishes to use static pages for blog content - and wants the blog visible, in search hit lists. I set up search gadgets for my blog - but have noticed that the search only seems to work with posts. How do I make my pages searchable? The blog owner does not understand the original reason for having static pages . Many blog owners use static pages for content viewable by visitors - but intentionally not indexed, by search engines.

Every month, we see a concern about content theft or impersonation, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . I deleted my blog last year! Now, I see it online again, using my name - but it's not in my dashboard! or I renamed my blog, last month! Somebody else is publishing it, this month!! These former blog owners have discovered the unpleasant reality of never ending spammer activity. URL recycling (a feature begged for, by many), plus blog content and feed caching (a reality, with most blogs), can lead to spammer harvesting and resurrection. And in some cases, to identity theft.

I've previously provided instructions for recovering a deleted page (static page) or post (dynamic page) . Retrieval of a deleted page / post involves editing the deleted page / post, using a URL which contains the BlogID, and the PageID / PostID. It's easy enough to get the BlogID - the source listing for any blog page will have multiple places where the BlogID can be found - but where can one find the PageID / PostID? The PageID / PostID can be found - given a small amount of effort, for any well indexed blog. Any cached copy, of the deleted page or post, will provide the PageID / PostID - once you know what to look for.

In some blogs, a popular accessory is a dynamic "similar posts" index, with image captioned links to other posts. Sometimes, the links can rival the usefulness of label lists. "Similar Posts" is not a Blogger feature - but there are several third party services which provide this feature, generally used in blogs which consistently use photos in the posts. This feature will be more useful, with photo rich blogs - and less useful, with label rich blogs, and blogs which link to other posts in text (like this blog).

Blog owners, seeking to recover a deleted post , can do so easily enough - if the post has been indexed by the search engines . A post that's not indexed by the search engines can sometimes be found in the blog posts newsfeed. With the post retrieved in the feed, we generally tell people to copy the post contents into a new post. To re publish the post, the owner has to re format the post content - and has to publish the recovered post, under a new URL. But with a little work, you can find the PostID, in the posts newsfeed - and frequently, re publish the post in question.

One of the challenges of using the Blogger dashboard "Posts" menu is the too easy ability to delete posts - if you are not thinking about what you're doing. Fortunately, under the right circumstances, accidental deletion of a single post won't cause a terrible catastrophe - though you (the blog owner) will need to react properly.

Occasionally, we see the plaintive query I just changed my blog so only my friends should be able to read the posts. My visitor log shows unknown visitors though. What is going on - has someone hacked my blog? and there we see a question from someone who doesn't know about search engine cache. If you make your blog private , the search engines won't index your newer posts, but what's already indexed will stay in cache. And if someone sees a search page entry, and clicks on it, they'll get (among other things) "View Cached Content", and they'll read the cached posts. The search engines won't care that you made the blog private. This will be similar to a deleted blog - you can delete, or make the blog private, and what's in cache will stay in cache. And you'll keep getting readers, to the cached posts. When you make your blog private, the "robots.txt" file is updated. Here's a copy of the file for this blog, "blogging.nit...