Blogging with Word

Test of post with Word Blogger now has an add-in for Microsoft Word to allow Blogging to Blogger without leaving Word. I assume you can add color, links and other Word formatting.

Blog posts double

Technorati stats are showing that the number of blogs posted are doubling.

Posting volume has doubled this year alone - between January and August, in part due to the growing number of mainstream blogging tools such as MSN Spaces, AOL Journals, Blogger, and LiveJournal. At the end of July, about 37,500 posts were being created every hour.

Posting volume is likely a better measure of blog activity than the number of blogs being created, and a better indicator of whether blogging is just a fad or a sustained activity. -MarketingVox

BlogPulse updated

BlogPulse has updated its site to include more updated blog data.

BlogPulse now ranks the top blogs, blog posts, news sources, and news stories daily. "With this new edition of BlogPulse, marketers and bloggers can gain a much deeper understanding of how key bloggers are shaping, catalyzing, and influencing broader perceptions about brands, products, services and everyday issues," said Intelliseek CEO Mike Nazzaro in a statement.

This update also enhances searches conducted through the site for blogs. Query results will be sorted with a combination of data and blog rank contributing to that order. --WebProNews

If you visit the BlogPulse site, note the box that shows how many new blogs were created in the prior 24 hour period. When I visited, it was more than 56,000!

Google raises bar?

Several times a year Google goes through some major tinkering with the algorithms it uses to rank Web sites. These major changes are different from the close to monthly changes you will see in positioning of sites. Around a year ago there was a very major change that dropped most sites by at least one notch. That is, from 6 to 5 --or whatever. The most recent change was almost as dramatic.

In the past few PageRank updates it has become quite apparent that Google is continuously raising the bar on PageRank. In their defense, with all of the reciprocal link building, link renting, etc. going on this was a natural reaction to the growing number high PageRank sites that attained those ranks simply by building or buying hundreds and thousands of links. -- Search Engine Journal

Using AdSense

Some pretty good tips on using AdSense in your blog come from SelfSEO, like this:

Internet users are "trained" to look in certain locations and ignore things that are outside of thier narrow scope of vision. People can look to the sides for information, but the propensity for them to click your ads becomes significantly lower. By putting ads directly "in thier face", you have a greater chance they will click it.

Here's a few more tips:

I use a white background instead of a color background.

I remove the border on adsense so it does not look like an ad and make sure it matches the background.

I keep the Title and the Hyperlink "Blue".

I keep Adsense "above the fold", so they are the "FIRST" things that people see when they arrive at the site.

I try to keep the ads "left" aligned.

I use the 160X600 vertical for people to see when they move vertically down the website page.

I try to place images near the google ads. Images draw the eyes near the ads.

I keep the site concise, clean and focused.

Relationship searches with Grokker

Search engines help you find sites based on relevance to your search topic. For example, if you search on "Blogger Forum" (without the parentheses) you get a linear list of results based on the sites' importance.

Now, suppose that instead of a linear result you could get a 3-dimensional result. Suppose further that instead of a return based on a site's importance in relation to your search topic, you got a result based on the relationship of sites to not only your topic, but to each other. It is a lot easier to see what I mean than to try and explain it. So, here is the same "Blogger Forum" search, but done with Grokker: http://www.grokker.com/applet.html?query=blogger%20forum. Once you play with this for a bit, try entering your own search topics.

You will notice that you have relationships that are loosely connected and relationships that are within "neighborhoods" of related topics. You can see that Blogger Users is a neighborhood that includes Blogger Forum as a site and Blogger Family as a neighborhood that also includes Blogger Forum. However, the relationships within each neighborhood is a bit different. If you then click on one of the sites, the relationships change depending on the choices you make.

Warning: you may find you are spending hours investigating these relationships and discovering sites you never knew existed because a new relationship was suggested to you by Grokker.

Getting dropped by AdSense

Now that Google has opened AdSense to a larger base (bloggers), there seems to be more reports of Google dropping people from the AdSense program for alleged abuse.

A typical email from Google goes like this:

Hello xxxx,

It has come to our attention that invalid clicks have been generated
on the ads on your web pages. We have therefore disabled your Google
AdSense account. Please understand that this step was taken in an
effort to protect the interest of the AdWords advertisers.

The Blogger_user_support Yahoo Group has a thread now on the subject:

Just wanted to share that after a 14 day application process, I was approved for Google AdSense and began using it. I was surprised and happy to see the money I was earning. I also began using site meter at the same time and was surprised at the number of hits I am getting per day, about 100 per weekday. However all of a sudden on day 3 of AdSense my revenue was 75% less than before and then 4th day it was zero and 5th day I received an email stating I was booted out of the program.

Their email seemed to be a standard letter in which they accused my account activity as looking like I am using a robot program or an automated ad clicking program or other computer programs to artificially inflate my clicks. Therefore they closed my account and won't even pay me for those 3days. I am miffed and frankly, offended.

How do you avoid being accused of AdSense manipulation? Take a look HERE for a good article on the subject. It goes from the obvious (don't click on your own AdSense links) to the less obvious.

Yahoo guidelines on employee blogging

Now that Yahoo has it's own blogging feature (Yahoo 360), the company has come out with official guidelines for it's employees who choose to blog. Company guidelines are essential since so many bloggers have been fired or otherwise disciplined without any warning in advance as to company policy on the issue.

In essence, the policy states that no employee may blog about any company issue unless the issue has already been made public by the company. This would probably be a given in any standard-form blogging guideline that a company might want to implement. Taken a step further, what about companies that have official blogs?

"Some companies have a two-tiered blogging scenario. On the official level, they employ marketing people such as Microsoft's Robert Scoble and Google's Michael Krantz who are specifically tasked with evangelizing via the short form."

"Meanwhile, well-known employees often write personal blogs in which they have to constantly remind readers that they're not speaking for the company." -InternetNews

So, it can get pretty hairy out there deciding not only what the guidelines should be, but whether the employee is an official blogger, official blogger but blogging on his own time, or just an employee who mentions the company. Three sets of guidelines, perhaps?

Dear Blogger: a wish list

Fredrik Wacka sums up what all of us have been talking about for about two years (since Google took over Blogger). His open-letter to Google starts out with a statement we have heard over and over again here at Blogger Forum: "I have tried to find ways to switch from Blogger to another publishing system, but there are problems I'd like to avoid. So I figured I could try influencing you to improve Blogger instead."

Here's what Fredrik wants, and it's a short, reasonable list:

1. Categories -- it's standard in almost every other blog publishing system. Now that categories automate Technorati tagging too, I really need them.

2. An integrated TrackBack function -- it's an extra burden to do it manually, and I often skip that part I'm afraid. Give me Pingback too while you're at it. You don't have to be embarrassed that you didn't invent it. Who cares?

3. Comments that are as customizable as the rest of the templates. And please stop asking people to sign up for a Blogger account as your default option. It makes many choose not to comment (I use Haloscan instead).

Speaking of comments, take a look at some of the comments Fredrik's article has received from Blogger users.

Possible Blogger enhancements

Blogger has been quiet for quite some time on what will be next in the Blogger.com world. With the persistent problems in performance, Blogger users would first like to be assured that more effort is being put into developing a more stable and reliable base product.

However, there is talk about other enhancements in the development or "We're thinking about it" stage.

Here are some ideas that Blogger is looking into as reported in Computerworld:

Native image uploading. The ability to upload images directly through a native Blogger interface instead of through indirect methods.

Private groups. Although it is possible to password protect blogs with third-party products, Blogger does not support private blogs or private areas. This would allow Blogger users to control who can view their blogs.

Gmail integration. This would be a natural. However, everyone is a bit fuzzy at this point as to what integration would entail and exactly what benefits this would bring to Blogger and Gmail users.

Mobile Blogger. Google introduced the latest enhancement to Blogger last week, when it launched Blogger Mobile, a feature that lets users create a new blog and post to it from mobile devices. "There's lots of people walking around with little blogging appliances which others may call mobile phones." --Biz Stone