I think many Blogger users have been waiting for such improvements, the most useful option probably is the robots settings for me.
I used to have my template with a special meta tag, so search engines won't index archive pages or search results pages. Now, I have set up this option:
You can read this page for details of those options. The robots tags is also available in per post basis, you can change for specific post.
The result is in HTTP Response Header, not in HTML (Response Body):
I noticed that there are some entries of Dynamic Views from search result, and I do not want those, so I customized the robots.txt based on current default robots.txt on Blogspot:
There is also a new setting for writing your own message for 404. The text (HTML is allowed) is basically put into a small message box, the one like the No Found message when you search something not in your blog.
I wrote a 404 message, I think it fits this blog's style. Try to put something in URL and see by yourself.
There seems to have a new
The last one I think is useful is the Custom Redirection. I used to have a page call Selections, but I never updated it after I created it, so I deleted a while ago. If I want, now I can set up a redirection for it.
The other scenario is typo in post title. We all make mistakes, and sometimes you want to fix it. If you post a blog post, then you finally notice there is a typo in your blog post. It may be too late to delete it and recreate a new post with correct post title. You can not change post slug URL, you must re-post in order to fix it.
The post probably is already indexed by search engine and even shared by your readers. If you delete it, whoever follow the link will not find it.
With this new redirection feature, there is no problem. Just post and set up a redirection, then redirect from the embarrassing one to the new one.
Even you can see Google use posts contents to describe, I don't really care because it does not read like globgrubglab.
As for posts:
The first one should not have post title and time tag in the description, but second one is correct.
With Search Description feature, the issues above can be avoid. The question is are you willing to and can you remember to write a short description for each post? I am not and probably can't. But that's just me.
Still, this is a good addition, it's good to have even I don't need it. You can never know if someday this may save your life.
Robots header tags
I used to have my template with a special meta tag, so search engines won't index archive pages or search results pages. Now, I have set up this option:
You can read this page for details of those options. The robots tags is also available in per post basis, you can change for specific post.
The result is in HTTP Response Header, not in HTML (Response Body):
robots.txt
(added at 2012-03-27T10:35:58Z)I noticed that there are some entries of Dynamic Views from search result, and I do not want those, so I customized the robots.txt based on current default robots.txt on Blogspot:
User-agent: Mediapartners-Google Disallow: User-agent: * Disallow: /search Disallow: /view Allow: / Sitemap: /feeds/posts/default?orderby=update
404
There is also a new setting for writing your own message for 404. The text (HTML is allowed) is basically put into a small message box, the one like the No Found message when you search something not in your blog.
I wrote a 404 message, I think it fits this blog's style. Try to put something in URL and see by yourself.
There seems to have a new
data:blog.pageType value error_page, if you customize your template, this may come in handy when you want to have totally different layout for error page.Redirection
The last one I think is useful is the Custom Redirection. I used to have a page call Selections, but I never updated it after I created it, so I deleted a while ago. If I want, now I can set up a redirection for it.
The other scenario is typo in post title. We all make mistakes, and sometimes you want to fix it. If you post a blog post, then you finally notice there is a typo in your blog post. It may be too late to delete it and recreate a new post with correct post title. You can not change post slug URL, you must re-post in order to fix it.
The post probably is already indexed by search engine and even shared by your readers. If you delete it, whoever follow the link will not find it.
With this new redirection feature, there is no problem. Just post and set up a redirection, then redirect from the embarrassing one to the new one.
Search Description
To be honesty, this is not so practical in my opinion. For homepage,Even you can see Google use posts contents to describe, I don't really care because it does not read like globgrubglab.
As for posts:
The first one should not have post title and time tag in the description, but second one is correct.
With Search Description feature, the issues above can be avoid. The question is are you willing to and can you remember to write a short description for each post? I am not and probably can't. But that's just me.
Still, this is a good addition, it's good to have even I don't need it. You can never know if someday this may save your life.