During the past several months, Google has made multiple decisions with regards to page rank, penalizing those who sell text links, etc. and I really haven’t commented on it or even been impacted by it much. I could always sort of see their motivation, even if I didn’t agree with their actions. However, the latest move to not allow links in the Blogger comment area to blogs other than those on their platform really has me baffled. If you have a Blogger blog, this means that you can no longer visit the blogs of those who leave comments unless they are also on Blogger, and it very likely means that you will see fewer comments in general. That just stinks. What stinks even more is that they didn’t even feel the need to let their users know about it, and just quietly stuck the change in. That is terrible customer service and terrible business practice.
Is there anything you can do about it?
1. Switch to WordPress or some other blogging platform.
2. Install Haloscan to continue allowing external links in the comments.
3. Encourage your readers to leave the URL to their site in the body of the comment.
4. Complain to Google. I doubt that will do any good, but who knows?
Do you use Blogger? Does this move make you want to switch, or am I making too much of it? Tell me what you think.
::Update – Dec. 20::
The ability to use a non-Blogger URL when commenting has been restored. Good to know they are listening to their customers.
Michael:
Is Haloscan any better than “Ye olden days?”
(I had to uninstall it years ago, because it wouldn’t let people post, either!)
Still checking it out again, it install pretty easily, just need to test it out a bit, there are Google ads on the comments form though LOL
Blogger is a free service? You take what you can get when it comes to free I guess. Thanks for the article, I was not aware of this.
Laura Bergells : there are actually a lot of utilities out there to allow you to import your blogger posts into Wordpress. Here’s one I found: http://randypeterman.com/StatTraq/wp-admin/import-blogger.php. Disclaimer: I have never used it, so I can not comment as to how well it works, or if it does.
If Google does this then I bet that the other big shots must be doing this as well.
In my opinion, this is just the beginning!
I have to agree with Fireblade. Google seems to be doing plenty of evil these days. They are upsetting the people that made them the biggest name in search engine results. If they keep it up, those same people are going to switch to another engine. They seem to be acting more like the school bully these days.
Well, I guess the problem isn’t a big one after all. Blogger just rolled out OpenId on their commenting system.
@Shantanu- yes, but that might be seen as a big giant pain to a lot of people until OpenID gains widespread use.
I’m suspicious that Google is going to use OpenID cookies to track users and integrate the info with DoubleClick.
Ask is looking much better than Google in terms of data collection – Ask announced today that it will erase search data within 2 hours which compares very favourably with Google who keep info for 2+ years.
Maybe Ask’s new motto should be ‘Positively good is better than not evil’!
Since Google has already given information to foreign governments there is little reason to be comfortable with their collecting data through open ID.
Thanks for the information on Ask.com, though. Their data deletion policy make them thousands of times more valuable to me than the maze of requirements and risks to personal freedom that Google provides along with its high traffic.
When it’s all said and done, Google is no longer worth the traffic.
New Reader here. Just another example of Google thinking it owns the idiot. And they want me to sign up? No thanks! No AdSense, no GMail, no Blogger, not even FeedBurner. Nothing Google, Inc.
Er, I meant to say that Google think it owns the INTERNET. Uff da. That’s what I get for thinking about something else when I’m typing!
Why am I always the last to know this stuff. I really must pay more attention.
I’m not anti-Google by any means, but this move really annoys me. I don’t even understand the thinking behind this. What is their motivation for stopping comments that link outside Blogger ?
I run a fairly successful world cup soccer blog on Blogger and this is going to mean far less comments and interaction on something I’ve worked a great deal on.
Anyone know of a WordPress plug in that can transfer 2+ years of posts from Blogger to WordPress?
@Mark – check out this recent article at BlogHerald for information about moving from Blogger to WordPress.
Puh-leaze. Google having yet another virtual monopoly? That would take the cake! I already have to find another alternative to FeedBurner after finding out that Google bought them. I sure hope WordPress isn’t STUPID enough to sell to Google!
You just watch, soon, they will be in hot water with the FTC like Microsoft was 10 years ago. The government tends to frown on Anti-competitive business practices.
Well, good news! Google blinked. The URLs with anon comments are back in Blogger again.
I wonder how many people moved their blogs before Google decided it was better to allow comments as before?
Google needs to modify their “Do no evil” slogan to include “But, if you do, don’t tell anyone.”
They have become notorious for bitch-slapping their users without warning.
It was probably an attempt to stop spam blogging, (creating blogs just to post your links) So i do not believe Google was trying to piss everyone off, just combat another problem.
I totally agree that Google is way too big for their britches. Your example is one of many about them trying to ‘manage’ the world “As Google Sees It”. What I find the funniest is all their press and mantra’s about “Do No Harm”, etc. and then they go and do what they want. I guess “harm” is in the eye of the BeGoogler!
Thanks,
Michael Rowles
SMB Security
CopiaTECH
I’ve never been a big fan of blogger anyway I don’t like the fact that google or anyone for that matter has any kind of control over me On the Net or in the real world. Im glad to see that they put it back to normal at least they realize they don’t control everything yet.
I think the whole thing about them going after link selling is extremely lame because that is the basis of their entire business model. Without selling links (ads) on their site they’d have no income or company.
I recently directed a friend who is setting up a blog to your site. He was thinking about going with google, but hopefully he has now taken the wordpress route. Also I hope it is alright, I took your advice on number 3 (Encourage your readers to leave the URL to their site in the body of the comment.)
Keep up the great work!
Max
The general lack of transparency by Google on this and other issues has certainly been frustrating. I have come to develop a certain dislike for Blogger blogs for several reasons:
1. When commenting, I often have to sign in to the service just to be able to post a comment under my profile name.
2. Annoying captcha system causes me to lose even more time while commenting (especially if there is an error and I have to redo it).
3. Links are nofollow, except for the very small percentage of bloggers who have managed to turn this off.
4. Comment author names link to a profile instead of the person’s website URL, which means that commenting does not provide any link juice even if it was not a nofollow.
Because of these “features”, I will actually seek out WordPress blogs for commenting and advertising purposes and will almost always avoid the Blogspot ones whenever possible.
The only exception to this is when I get added to friends lists, receive messages, etc. from community sites like BlogCatalog, in which case I will usually return the favor and leave a comment on the person’s site even if it does happen to be a Blogspot blog.
@Guy Honda:
I agree entirely with that one. It seems so hypocritical of Google. What i was wondering about selling links, and the practice as a whole, regards buying link images (such a favicons). Are these concidered links that are purchased..or advertisemnts? Is the jury out?!
Let me just quote a fragment of an article that I found at helot.org
They go after link sellers and calling them link manipulators, but…
“putting a sponsored link in the No1 position is certainly Google’s opinion about the value of the page. That opinion may have a zero algorithmic value, but Google Adsense executives valued it No1 to the highest bidder. Google says to the end user that the top position is the most relevant page on a given topic, though their own algorithm disagrees with that opinion. How is that for unethical practices? The only question that I have for Matt Cutts is “does he still believe that those who manipulate the search engine result page are also likely to cut corners in other areas of business?”
Google has too much power and we know that power corrupts!
Google is on a massive power trip, and they have the power to do it too. If you really want a hint at what google is doing, read this thread from front to end: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=674265
I think the staff at Google haven’t been laid in a looooong time. Yep. That’s the conclusion I’ve come to, ‘cos I can’t think of any other reason why they’re being utter vicious so-and-so’s.
Are they bored? Lonely? Need someone to come play hopskotch with them? Are their shrinks demanding too much money?
What is it, Google? Talk to Aunty Tessy, will ya? There there, now. I’ll make you a nice cup of cocoa with a drop of whiskey, then you can tell me all about it.
Google is so powerful now that they have the power to pick and choose what they want. I can only see things becoming worse as Google tightens its grip on the internet. It is like Microsoft and Windows no one likes it but no one can live without it
I was on blogger before I moved to wordpress and all I can say is that I had difficulty with HaloScan.
When they did that update and removed, I was also really really pissed. There was no official post from blogger/google about it.
We the users gave so much power to google its time for us to think it again!