Blogger's blog history widget seems like something that you would want to use. It seems like it would provide a way to access any content on the blog. After tyring it out, I don't think that I will ever use it again.
Why not? What's wrong with it?
In the first place, I don't think it helps to find something of interest. It just allows you to find somthing in a certain time frame. And that doesn't seem very helpful to me.
In the second place, it causes duplicate content, perhaps even triplicate content. On one level, it creates composites of post pages within each period of time. On another level, it creates some kind of "/search?" entities at least at the yearly level.
In the third place, the composite blog history pages make the post pages become supplemental results. Before they decided to totally deny the existence of the supplemental results index, they used to explain that inferior pages, especially ones containing duplicate content, might be put in the supplemental index so that they could be included in the search results pages (SERPS) when not enough results could be found in the main index. What they will always refuse to admit is that pages which get included in the supplemental index are blocked from being included in the SERPS for typical searches -- or at the least, not well ranked. The problem seems to stem from the fact that the blog history pages have more content than the post pages and thus the post pages are the ones that contain dulicate content. I would have expected google's own blogger tool to help in using website best practices instead of making you use website worst practices.
So just by using the blog history widget, there is a risk of damaging the web presence of a blog. In some cases adding the widget to a blog and later removing it can really clobber a blog, so I can't recommend removing the widget if you have already used it. Changing the Settings->Archiving->Archive_Frequency from something other than "No Archive" to "No Archive" will delete the archive pages. It may seem like that would be a good idea, but, those archive pages are in the caches and will remain in the caches for a very long time. This leads to all kinds of problems. I did that to this blog and, at least for now, webmaster tools says !Site not indexed. On the other hand, maybe they are just mad at this blog.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Friday, January 1, 2010
Supplemental result entombs page
The supplemental index is said not to exist.
Then would they please delete the whole gawful, craptastic, abominable thing?
An entry in the supplemental results index is a doppelganger. For whatever reason, judgement is pronounced upon the page and the spell is cast upon it.
A doppelganger is a ghostly double of one that lives, and haunts its living counterpart. In folklore, the doppelganger is said to have no shadow or reflection, much like vampires in some traditions.
When the maker of SERPS nervously tries to add a page and sees the doppleganger, it runs in fright leaving the page to fend for itself. Only the stern warning from the Main Index "look, I've got nothing", can force the maker of SERPS to to include the doppelganger.
But note that asking the maker of SERPS to include the haunted page is asking too much. Also note that searchbots are loathe to crawl a page that has a doppleganger. It is only rarely possible to prod the lowly supplemental searchbot to go there. Changing the page content, or even changing the url cannot make the doppelganger go away.
It is an eternal spell and nobody will ever believe you. They'll just say "well, your page must be really crummy."
If you want a page to become supplemental, one sure-fire way is to change its url which will guarantee that the spell will be cast. So don't forget that cool urls never change.
All I can say about somebody that gets a supplemental result is "I pity the fool."
Then would they please delete the whole gawful, craptastic, abominable thing?
An entry in the supplemental results index is a doppelganger. For whatever reason, judgement is pronounced upon the page and the spell is cast upon it.
A doppelganger is a ghostly double of one that lives, and haunts its living counterpart. In folklore, the doppelganger is said to have no shadow or reflection, much like vampires in some traditions.
When the maker of SERPS nervously tries to add a page and sees the doppleganger, it runs in fright leaving the page to fend for itself. Only the stern warning from the Main Index "look, I've got nothing", can force the maker of SERPS to to include the doppelganger.
But note that asking the maker of SERPS to include the haunted page is asking too much. Also note that searchbots are loathe to crawl a page that has a doppleganger. It is only rarely possible to prod the lowly supplemental searchbot to go there. Changing the page content, or even changing the url cannot make the doppelganger go away.
It is an eternal spell and nobody will ever believe you. They'll just say "well, your page must be really crummy."
If you want a page to become supplemental, one sure-fire way is to change its url which will guarantee that the spell will be cast. So don't forget that cool urls never change.
All I can say about somebody that gets a supplemental result is "I pity the fool."
Friday, June 27, 2008
Results not supplemental then are
June 27th is probably after the google dance.
Yesterday, I saw 10 results of which 5 were supplemental for the blog in question. Today there are 6 results of which 5 are supplemental. See supplemental results with site:site-name/* and see all results with site:site-name (without the trailing *). Everybody has forgotten about supplemental results and they will probably be disclaimed. But, a page that is in the supplemental index has a very low probablility of being found by a web search. That is most frustrating, but it is slightly better than not being indexed. Anyway, google did crawl the blog in question this month. It started in February and beginning to have a few obscure searches turn up in google.
Yesterday, I saw 10 results of which 5 were supplemental for the blog in question. Today there are 6 results of which 5 are supplemental. See supplemental results with site:site-name/* and see all results with site:site-name (without the trailing *). Everybody has forgotten about supplemental results and they will probably be disclaimed. But, a page that is in the supplemental index has a very low probablility of being found by a web search. That is most frustrating, but it is slightly better than not being indexed. Anyway, google did crawl the blog in question this month. It started in February and beginning to have a few obscure searches turn up in google.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Pages appear and then disappear
I was not surprised that the pages that had reappeared in search results yesterday vanished just as quickly today. I did make a new blog post which showed up in google search results within a few minutes. I expect it to be gone tomorrow. However, this is the 21st and google does a dance around the end of the month. Maybe google will crawl the blog in a few days. Maybe not.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Flagged blog listed again
Four days after clicking the blogger flag blog button (to see what it would do), the blog post which I had flagged and then unflagged got listed again. During those 4 days, I edited and reposted the page that I had been viewing at the time I had clicked on the flag blog button. I saved the page to draft for a day which takes it out of view on the blog. I made more revisions on the page and then posted the page.
Then that particular page began to show up in some google search results. Using google webmaster tools, I could see that the blog had not been crawled since before the flag blog event. The only explanation I can think of is that some human intervention was involved.
In any case, I think the flag blog button is potentially hazardous, is too curious and easy to click, and requires no authentication of any kind. I had just clicked on it to see what it was. I was being dumb and flagged my own blog, but in some strange way a beneficial result has occured.
Although I did not notice anything that google would not like, it is possible that there had been something on the page that my edits corrected.
I don't know if it was flagging/unflagging the page, editing the page, or just ordinary google behavior. I hope that it is not the case that a blog can be taken out of search results just because one person happened to click the flag blog button once. The help page seems to insist that such a frustrating thing could not happen.
Then that particular page began to show up in some google search results. Using google webmaster tools, I could see that the blog had not been crawled since before the flag blog event. The only explanation I can think of is that some human intervention was involved.
In any case, I think the flag blog button is potentially hazardous, is too curious and easy to click, and requires no authentication of any kind. I had just clicked on it to see what it was. I was being dumb and flagged my own blog, but in some strange way a beneficial result has occured.
Although I did not notice anything that google would not like, it is possible that there had been something on the page that my edits corrected.
I don't know if it was flagging/unflagging the page, editing the page, or just ordinary google behavior. I hope that it is not the case that a blog can be taken out of search results just because one person happened to click the flag blog button once. The help page seems to insist that such a frustrating thing could not happen.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Flag Blog
I was curious and clicked on the Flag Blog button on my blogger blog. After that, I can no longer seem to find my posts via blogsearch. It seems like clicking on flag blog must put the blog in the penalty box. That is something I am not going to do again.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Please Don't Google Me Too Fast
Google has not liked me.
There is some blog that says Wow!How fast Google crawling this site and claims that it got indexed in one minute.
For me, google only seems to crawl once in a lucky month.
If I had only know all of google's trade secrets about how unsuspecting pages get thrown on the supplemental results dump, things might have been better. Even though it has been made secret again, the auxiliary supplemental results index does still exist.
There is some blog that says Wow!How fast Google crawling this site and claims that it got indexed in one minute.
For me, google only seems to crawl once in a lucky month.
If I had only know all of google's trade secrets about how unsuspecting pages get thrown on the supplemental results dump, things might have been better. Even though it has been made secret again, the auxiliary supplemental results index does still exist.
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