Official Blogger Blog: 2016

A first few tweaks toward a better Blogger

November 22, 2016

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

More custom template flexibility

May 24, 2016

added some expressions
Starting today, we’re introducing a new set of operators, which we’re calling lambda expressions, that allow you to apply rules to whole sets of data (think posts, comments, or labels), rather than just individual instances.
Let’s say you wanted to add a flower image to all posts with the label “Flower,” for example. With lambda expressions, simply define a variable name that each item in the set will take, and then refer to the variable name as though it were each item.

<b:if cond='data:post.labels any (l => l.name == "Flower")'>

<b:if/>

An example of adding a flower icon to posts labelled 'Flower'

There’s lots more that you can do using lambda expressions, like only showing posts in your feed with a given label or quickly calculating how many posts you have with a given number of comments. For a full list of the new lambda expressions available, check out the help forum.

Happy Blogging! 😃

Posted by Luke, Software Engineer

Keep your readers interested with the AdSense Guide to Audience Engagement

May 06, 2016

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.

Bringing HTTPS to all blogspot domain blogs

May 03, 2016

[Cross-posted from the Google Security Blog]began

The HTTPS indicator in the Chrome browser

new setting called HTTPS Redirecthttpshttphttphttps

The new HTTPS Redirect setting in the Blogger dashboard

mixed contentspot and fixreleasedHTTPS EverywherefeedbackPosted by Milinda Perera, Software Engineer, Security

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

April 19, 2016

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.

Best practices for reviewing products you've received for free

March 11, 2016

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:

the company’s site
the company’s social media accounts
an online merchant’s page that sells the product
a review service’s page featuring reviews of the product
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

A first few tweaks toward a better Blogger

More custom template flexibility

Keep your readers interested with the AdSense Guide to Audience Engagement

Bringing HTTPS to all blogspot domain blogs

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

Best practices for reviewing products you've received for free

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