Google Blogger Buzz

A first few tweaks toward a better Blogger

November 22nd, 2016 | by A Googler | published in Google Blogger Buzz

From New York to Jakarta, Blogger is one of the most popular ways to publish the things you’re passionate about. Still, we’ve heard that there’s more we can do to make the platform a better place to have your unique voice be heard. So we’ll be making some adjustments over time to bring you a faster, easier to use and more beautiful Blogger.

To kick things off, we’ve taken a crack at simplifying Blogger’s dashboard so that it’s easier for you to get right to the tools you need. Now, whenever you open Blogger, you’ll be taken right to your blog with the most recent post, putting you one click or tap closer to drafting something new.

We’ve also updated Blogger’s header bar, making it consistent with what you’ll find in other Google products. And as part of our commitment to building products that are accessible for all, we’ve adjusted Blogger’s colors to make things easier to see.

We’re starting small with these adjustments, but hope they help you create more amazing work. Please send any feedback our way and stay tuned for more updates to come.

Happy blogging!

Posted by Guy Ronen, Product Manager

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Keep your readers interested with the AdSense Guide to Audience Engagement

May 6th, 2016 | by A Googler | published in Google Blogger Buzz

Today, information is at our fingertips and we can access it from anywhere on any device. Just a few taps pull up millions of websites all competing for our attention. For bloggers, engaging with your audience has never been more important or more challenging. To help lay the foundation to a winning engagement strategy, the AdSense team created the AdSense Guide to Audience Engagement.

Research shows that 29% of smartphone users will immediately switch to another site or app if it doesn’t satisfy their needs.

To help keep your audience engaged, get your free copy of the AdSense Guide to Audience Engagement.

In the guide, you’ll learn:

How to help your audience become familiar with your brand
Best practices to design user journeys
How to develop content that resonates with your audience
Ways to make your content easy to consume
Why you should share the love with other sites by referring to good sources

If you’re interested in more updates from the Google AdSense team, follow us on Google+ and Twitter. We’d love to hear what you think.

Posted by Jay Castro, the AdSense Team.

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Bringing HTTPS to all blogspot domain blogs

May 3rd, 2016 | by Google Blogs | published in Google Blogger Buzz

[Cross-posted from the Google Security Blog]

HTTPS is fundamental to internet security; it protects the integrity and confidentiality of data sent between websites and visitors’ browsers. Last September, we began rolling out HTTPS support for blogspot domain blogs so you could try it out. Today, we’re launching another milestone: an HTTPS version for every blogspot domain blog. With this change, visitors can access any blogspot domain blog over an encrypted channel.

The HTTPS indicator in the Chrome browser

As part of this launch, we’re removing the HTTPS Availability setting. Even if you did not previously turn on this setting, your blogs will have an HTTPS version enabled.

We’re also adding a new setting called HTTPS Redirect that allows you to opt-in to redirect HTTP requests to HTTPS. While all blogspot blogs will have an HTTPS version enabled, if you turn on this new setting, all visitors will be redirected to the HTTPS version of your blog at https://.blogspot.com even if they go to http://.blogspot.com. If you choose to turn off this setting, visitors will have two options for viewing your blog: the unencrypted version at http://.blogspot.com or the encrypted version at https://.blogspot.com.

The new HTTPS Redirect setting in the Blogger dashboard

Please be aware that mixed content may cause some of your blog’s functionality not to work in the HTTPS version. Mixed content is often caused by incompatible templates, gadgets, or post content. While we’re proactively fixing most of these errors, some of them can only be fixed by you, the blog authors. To help spot and fix these errors, we recently released a mixed content warning tool that alerts you to possible mixed content issues in your posts, and gives you the option to fix them automatically before saving.

Existing links and bookmarks to your blogs are not affected by this launch, and will continue to work. Please note that blogs on custom domains will not yet have HTTPS support.

This update expands Google’s HTTPS Everywhere mission to all blogspot domain blogs. We appreciate your feedback and will use it to make future improvements.

Posted by Milinda Perera, Software Engineer, Security

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An update to the Blogger post editor to help with mixed content

April 19th, 2016 | by Google Blogs | published in Google Blogger Buzz

Back in September, we announced that HTTPS support was coming to blogspot.com, making it possible for you to encrypt connections to your blog; since then, many of you have enabled HTTPS for your blogs. In some cases, not all of your blog’s functionality has worked over HTTPS due to mixed content errors often stemming from your template, gadgets, or blog post content.

To help spot and fix some of these errors, we’re releasing a mixed content warning tool that alerts you to possible mixed content issues in your posts, and gives you the option to fix them automatically before saving.

To use the tool, turn on HTTPS for your blog, open the Blogger editor HTML view, and click Save or Publish. If the editor detects any errors they will be shown above the editor, along with the option to fix the errors found.

Happy blogging!

Posted by Shweta Karwa, Software Engineer, Security.

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Best practices for reviewing products you’ve received for free

March 11th, 2016 | by A Googler | published in Google Blogger Buzz

Editor’s note: This post was cross posted from the Google Webmaster Central Blog.

As a form of online marketing, some companies today will send bloggers free products to review or give away in return for a mention in a blogpost. Whether you’re the company supplying the product or the blogger writing the post, below are a few best practices to ensure that this content is both useful to users and compliant with Google Webmaster Guidelines.

Use the nofollow tag where appropriate

Links that pass PageRank in exchange for goods or services are against Google guidelines on link schemes. Companies sometimes urge bloggers to link back to:
1. the company’s site
2. the company’s social media accounts
3. an online merchant’s page that sells the product
4. a review service’s page featuring reviews of the product
5. the company’s mobile app on an app store

Bloggers should use the nofollow tag on all such links because these links didn’t come about organically (i.e., the links wouldn’t exist if the company hadn’t offered to provide a free good or service in exchange for a link). Companies, or the marketing firms they’re working with, can do their part by reminding bloggers to use nofollow on these links.

Disclose the relationship

Users want to know when they’re viewing sponsored content. Also, there are laws in some countries that make disclosure of sponsorship mandatory. A disclosure can appear anywhere in the post; however, the most useful placement is at the top in case users don’t read the entire post.
Create compelling, unique content

The most successful blogs offer their visitors a compelling reason to come back. If you’re a blogger you might try to become the go-to source of information in your topic area, cover a useful niche that few others are looking at, or provide exclusive content that only you can create due to your unique expertise or resources.

For more information, please drop by our Google Webmaster Central Help Forum.

Posted by the Google Webspam Team

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An update on Google Friend Connect

December 21st, 2015 | by A Googler | published in Google Blogger Buzz

In 2011, we announced the retirement of Google Friend Connect for all non-Blogger sites. We made an exception for Blogger to give readers an easy way to follow blogs using a variety of accounts. Yet over time, we’ve seen that most people sign into Friend Connect with a Google Account. So, in an effort to streamline, in the next few weeks we’ll be making some changes that will eventually require readers to have a Google Account to sign into Friend Connect and follow blogs.

As part of this plan, starting the week of January 11, we’ll remove the ability for people with Twitter, Yahoo, Orkut or other OpenId providers to sign in to Google Friend Connect and follow blogs. At the same time, we’ll remove non-Google Account profiles so you may see a decrease in your blog follower count.

We encourage you to tell affected readers (perhaps via a blog post), that if they use a non-Google Account to follow your blog, they need to sign up for a Google Account, and re-follow your blog. With a Google Account, they’ll get blogs added to their Reading List, making it easier for them to see the latest posts and activity of the blogs they follow.

We know how important followers are to all bloggers, but we believe this change will improve the experience for both you and your readers.

Posted by Michael Goddard, Software Engineer

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Highlight the posts that matter the most

December 10th, 2015 | by A Googler | published in Google Blogger Buzz

As bloggers, we all know how important it is to post frequently in order to encourage readers to come back. Of course, the more you post, the more quickly your posts slip down into the archives, making it harder for your readers to discover everything you’ve posted that they might be interested in.

To help make it easier to showcase the posts you want your readers to see, we’ve created a new gadget called Featured Post. With Featured Post, you can choose posts you’ve shared on your blog and highlight them wherever you’d like.

Whether you’d like to re-share that delicious holiday recipe from a few years back, spotlight a can’t-miss promotion you’re running, or just revive something quirky from the archives, the Featured Post gadget is a simple way to show off the content that matters most.

To try it, just head to your Layout tab, add a gadget, and select ‘Featured Post’. You’ll be able to place the gadget wherever you’d like on your blog and then choose the post you’d like to show. If you’d like to highlight something new, you can change the post you feature at any time.

Happy blogging!

Posted by Guy Ronen, Product Manager

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HTTPS support coming to Blogspot

September 30th, 2015 | by Google Blogs | published in Google Blogger Buzz

This morning we posted an update about Blogspot to Google’s Security Blog https://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2015/09/https-support-coming-to-blogspot.html.

Since 2008, we’ve worked to encrypt the connections between our users and Google servers. Over the years we’ve announced that Search, Gmail, Drive, and many other products have encrypted connections by default, and most recently, we’ve made a similar announcement for our ads products.

In this same vein, today we’re expanding on the HTTPS Everywhere mission and beginning an initial rollout of HTTPS support for Blogspot. HTTPS is a cornerstone of internet security as it provides several important benefits: it makes it harder for bad actors to steal information or track the activities of blog authors and visitors, it helps check that visitors open the correct website and aren’t being redirected to a malicious location, and it helps detect if a bad actor tries to change any data sent from Blogger to a blog visitor.

While this initial rollout won’t support all of our Blogger users, we wanted to take the first step to make HTTPS available for Blogspot; for those users who want to try it early.

We’re rolling this out gradually and Blogspot authors interested in enabling HTTPS support can begin opting-in today. Simply log into https://www.blogger.com, click on the blog you’d like to make HTTPS enabled, navigate to the Settings page, and select “yes” for “HTTPS Availability”. Unfortunately, blogs with custom domains are not supported in this first version.

Once enabled, your blog will become accessible over both HTTP and HTTPS connections. Blogspot authors should be aware that if they choose to encrypt at this time, some of the current functionality of their blog may not work over HTTPS. This can be a result of template, gadgets, and blog post content, and is often caused by mixed content errors, some of which may be fixable by the author themselves.

We’ll also be moving some of our own blogs over to HTTPS gradually, beginning with the Official Google Blog and the Google Online Security Blog.

For the Blogspot authors who try this out – we’re interested to hear your feedback while we continue to improve this feature and its capabilities! For more information, visit our Help Center.

Posted by Jo-el van Bergen, Software Engineer, Security.

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Even more expansions to the Blogger template language

June 25th, 2015 | by A Googler | published in Google Blogger Buzz

Recently we introduced a new set of expressions to the Blogger templating language, designed to let you customize the HTML of each post and page on your blog. We’ve gotten great feedback on them, so we figured we’d offer even more.

Now you can try out new tags, like:

b:elseif for a simpler multiple-case b:if branch.
b:switch and b:case for succinctly handling several possible cases of a variable.
b:eval for evaluation of more complex expressions involving data variables.
b:with for creating a nicer variable alias for a calculated value.

An example of customizing the markup of your blog, using the new switch tags.

If you’d like to customize your blog’s template using these tags and expressions, just head to the dashboard under Settings > Template > Edit HTML. To see the full specs of the new tags or learn more, check out the help article.

Happy Templating!

Posted by Luke Bjerring, Software Engineer

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Adding new expressions to Blogger templates

May 22nd, 2015 | by A Googler | published in Google Blogger Buzz

Blogger’s template engine is powered by a flexible editing language, consisting of a set of Widget Tags which use expressions to conditionally change the output HTML for each post and page on your blog.

Using these expressions, you can customize the HTML output of your blog, to adjust the look and feel. You could, for example, show an image behind the header, but only on the homepage. Or add a flower icon, next to a post’s title, if the post has the ‘Flower’ label.

You can customize your blog’s template under Settings > Template > Edit HTML.

You can customize your template’s markup, to change the look and feel of your blog.

Previously, the expressions in Blogger’s templates could

Add or concatenate values with +
Subtract values with -
Check for equality with != and ==
Compare values with , >, and >=

Now, support has been added for many more expression operators, including:

Inversion of true/false values with !/not e.g. cond=‘!data:post.allowComments’>…
Picking between 2 values with ?: e.g. expr:class=‘data:post.allowComments ? “comments” : “no-comments”‘ …
Checking if a value is a member of a set or array, with in/contains e.g. cond=‘data:blog.pageType in {“index”, “archive”}’>…
Combining multiple conditions with and/or e.g. cond=‘data:blog.pageType == “index” and data:post.allowComments’>…
Changing the order of operations with () e.g.
expr:style=‘”max-width: ” + (data:width + 10) + “px;”‘>…

For a full specification of the new operators, see the help article.

Happy Templating!

Posted by Luke Bjerring, Software Engineer

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Custom domains for your blog made easy

January 13th, 2015 | by Blogger | published in Google Blogger Buzz

You invest a lot of time in your blog, making sure it fits your personal brand and style. And a big part of making it your own comes from what you call it and where it lives. Blogger has long let you host your blog on a custom domain, so that you can give it any URL you choose. To make that process even easier, starting today, we’re integrating Blogger directly with Google Domains, allowing you to purchase a custom domain for your blog right from Blogger with just a few clicks.

If your blog is itching for a new home, you can grab one via Google Domains by popping open Blogger and heading to the Publishing section of your blog’s Settings tab.

If you purchase a new domain from Google Domains, it’s also easy to create a new blog for that domain right there.

Interested in learning more about Google Domains? Read on.

Happy blogging!

Posted by Marc Ridey, Software Engineer

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Making it easier to manage pages on your blog

February 27th, 2014 | by A Googler | published in Google Blogger Buzz

Adding pages to your blog can be a great way to organize content – like ‘About me’ or ‘Advertise’ sections. To make managing pages easier, we redesigned the ‘Pages’ tab in the Blogger dashboard to make it look and feel more like something you’re already familiar with: managing posts.

The new look for the pages list on each blog

With the new design, you can:

View important details about your pages like view count and comments
Manage multiple pages at once with new selection tools
Easily see whether pages are in draft, imported, or published states

The new look for the summary of pages on each blog

Linking to your Pages

Managing the Pages Widgets for your blog is now done through the Layout UI. Multiple Pages Widgets can be added, if you want different pages linked to from different areas of the layout.

The ‘Pages’ widget as it appears in the list, after clicking ‘Add a Gadget’

For a Horizontal list, add a Pages Widget under the Header (e.g. “Navigation Pages” below)
For a Vertical list, add a Pages Widget to a side column (e.g. “External Pages” below)

A layout with two Pages widgets, titled ‘Navigation Pages’ (horizontal) and ‘External Pages’ (vertical)

Adding external links

To add a link to a URL which is not one of your pages, when editing or adding the Pages Widget, click ‘+ Add external link’ at the top of the ‘Pages to Show’ list.

Dialog for Pages widget configuration

This will show a dialog where you can set the title and URL to add to the list.

Dialog for adding external links to the Pages widgets

Happy blogging!

Posted by Cal Smith and Katrina Le

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Earn money from your blog this holiday season

December 11th, 2013 | by A Googler | published in Google Blogger Buzz

The holiday season is here and retailers are spending more on online advertising to promote their products. Your blog has valuable space and you can earn some extra money by placing Google AdSense ads next to your content.

If you don’t already have AdSense set up on your blog, visit the Earnings tab of your Blogger dashboard to give it a try. It’s free and only takes a moment to sign up.

And if you’ve tried AdSense out in the past, head to your blog and give it a second look. It now has updated controls, so you can match the ads that appear to the style of your blog.

Happy holidays!

Posted by Ian Cohan-Shapiro, Marketing Manager

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Automatically share your blog posts to Google+

September 10th, 2013 | by A Googler | published in Google Blogger Buzz

Notifying your followers that you’ve published a new blog post not only gets the conversation going, it encourages them to reshare your content with others. In this way it’s critical for growing your blog’s audience and engagement. But it takes time. And we want to give you that time back.

Starting today you can automatically share your blog posts publicly to Google+ — as soon as you publish them, with no additional clicks. And of course: if you’ve enabled Google+ Comments, any replies on Google+ will also appear on your blog.

Blog post

Google+ post

If you’ve connected a Google+ page or profile to your blog, this new feature will start working the next time you publish a post. If you’d rather not share to Google+, or you’d prefer to be prompted each time, you can adjust your preferences in the Google+ tab of your Blogger Dashboard.

Happy blogging!

Posted by Marc Ridey, Software Engineer

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Bringing Google+ Comments to Blogger

April 18th, 2013 | by Emily Wood | published in Google Blogger Buzz

Cross-posted from the Google Official blog

Posted by +Yonatan Zunger, Principal Engineer

Reading and responding to comments can be one of the most rewarding aspects of blogging. Not only do they help you connect with your readers, they can also inspire later blog entries. The challenge, oftentimes, is following all the conversations around your content—on Google+, for instance, as well as on your website. So we’re making things a lot simpler.

Starting today, you can bring Google+ Comments to your Blogger blog. Once you’ve enabled the feature through your Blogger Dashboard, you’ll enjoy a number of important benefits:

View your blog and Google+ comments, all in one place

Now when you’re browsing your blog’s comment threads, you’ll see activity from direct visitors, and from people talking about your content on Google+. For example, if there’s a public Google+ discussion about one of your blog entries, those comments and replies will also appear on your Blogger blog. This way you can engage with more of your readers, all in one place.

Help readers comment and connect with their circles

Your blog readers will now have the option to comment publicly, or privately to their circles on Google+. And when they’re browsing blog comments, they can view all of them, just the top ones, or only those from the people in their circles.

In all cases, you and your readers will only see the comments you have permission to see. Giving people these kinds of controls not only encourages more meaningful sharing—it can lead to more blog traffic.

To get started with Google+ Comments, just visit the Google+ tab of your Blogger Dashboard, and check “Use Google+ Comments.” (Older comments will continue to appear in the new widget.)

You can also visit any post on the Official Google Blog (like this one), or on Blogger Buzz (like this one), to see Google+ Comments in action.

Happy commenting!

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