This post is written to inform you about Blogger blogs redirecting to country specific URLs, what you should do and updates to threaded commenting of Blogger.
Blogger Redirecting URL
Many of you have found out that Blogspot blogs are redirecting its top level domain to country specific URL, also known as “ccTLD”. You can read it in detail in Blogger Help, here I’ll let you know the jest.
So what is top level domain?
In short, suppose you blog at example.blogspot.com. So your top level domain is com. What Blogger is doing is that they are redirecting this top level domain to “country code” specific URL. So if you are reading this blog in US it will be example.blogspot.com, if you are from Australia, it might get redirected to example.blogspot.com.au and if you are from India it will get redirected to example.blogspot.in. However, I came to know that it is for India only but Blogger Help page is also giving signs that it might come into effect to other countries too.
Why such a drastic change?
The main reason I think “providing greater flexibility in complying with valid removal requests pursuant to local law”. Suppose you are from India and published a post that does not complies with Indian law. So your readers from India will not be able to see it while readers outside India, such as, readers from US or Australia will be able to see it.
How to stop this Blogger URL redirect?
Sadly, it’s not possible if you are blogging using Blogger. It’s a global change and there are no permanent ways except of having a custom domain. However, if you are the reader then you can stop this redirection by adding /ncr at the end of the URL like this:
http://example.blogspot.com/ncr
This “NCR” stands for “No Country Redirect”.
Any SEO impact?
After the introduction of rel='canonical' (which tells the search engines that though URLs are different, the content is same) Blogger engineers implemented it for us. So you need not to worry about it if you have <b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/>. This can be found under opening head tag while you are editing your template from Edit HTML. If it’s not there then add the below code just after <head> tag.
<link expr:href='data:blog.canonicalUrl' rel='canonical'/>
Who remains unaffected?
Only those who have custom domain set up with Blogger, remains unaffected.
What you should do immediately?
If you have added any kind of sharing buttons, update it immediately. I have updated many posts. I will tell you why and explain it in my next post.
Blogger Threaded Commenting
Blogger engineers updated the threaded comments in Blogger. Some common problems which got fixed are:
- Seeing a blank page in Internet Explorer
- Reply button not working in Google Chrome
- Page jumps to bottom in Firefox
Previously I wrote that changing defer attribute to async fixes Blogger threaded commenting for first two problems. Now I find that it’s defaulting to async. So you all can turn it on safely. If it’s not working on your blog even if you have done every settings then try enabling threaded comments manually.
Hope that redirect thingy wont come to my country, ever! :D
ReplyDeleteneed help, after i updated template, comments are not showing for older posts....how to fix it???
ReplyDelete@Umanga
ReplyDeleteThis could be a bug or a problem with your threaded comments. Please report this to - http://groups.google.com/group/bloggerdev/ and see what Blogger engineers have to say about it.
wow nice post very helpful
ReplyDelete