Blogger Custom Domain: Best Setup for Optimizing your Blog Pagerank!
June 25th, 2007
Ok Blogspot Users — Stop the Whining and Move Over to Custom Domains NOW!
Blog Bloke has exciting news for all his Blokesters and I’m so juiced that I had to take a pill. This tutorial will not only show you how to properly set up your Custom Domain in New Blogger and why you should do it, but it will also explain how to set it up with or without the “www” prefix, why you should get rid of your old subdomain and how to do it without breaking any of your backlinks either.
I continually hear Blogger users lament that they regret ever starting their blog on the Blogger platform. Personally I can understand this because I used to be one of them. But ever since New Blogger came along with it’s robust code and flexibility I’ve come to realize that with a few hacks and some elbow grease it can be just as good as most of the Wordpress blogs out there.
I am a user of both platforms and each has its own strengths and weakness. Wordpress has a definite advantage with its plethora of plugins that are available, but with a little creative hacking I’ve found that New Blogger can accomplish much of the same thing that WP has to offer.
Down the road as coders develop more widgets (plugins) for New Blogger the differences between the two platforms could become even less a bone of contention. And with New Blogger’s new cool features like video and news widgets (see my far-right sidebar) it makes for an interesting matchup.
Nonetheless, I know that hardcore Wordpress users will never be converted and will continue to snub their nose down on New Blogger. But that is not the reason for this post.
What I want to get across is many of the features that New Blogger users envy over Wordpress are no longer an issue, and one of the big ones is using a Custom Domain name.
For those of you who do not know what I mean by a Custom Domain, I am referring to purchasing your own dot com address, such as I have — www.instabloke.com, instead of using the blogspot address www.blogbloke.com.
The custom domains feature is hosted FREE of charge by New Blogger and it never ceases to amaze me how many Blogspot users out there that are still using their original blogspot address. Big mistake!
One of the main reasons I keep hearing why they don’t want to switch over is because they are afraid of losing their inbound links or pagerank. Well friends, that is what post is all about because I am going to show you how to set up your own custom domain and not break your inbound links.
I know that this works because the Bloke has in fact already done it for this blog. Believe it or not it’s true! I’m also happy to report that I’ve finally resolved my DNS troubles with my custom domain.
The other night I stayed up to the wee hours of the morning working with GoDaddy engineer ‘Art’ and we figured out how to get my custom domain working with or without the www prefix, as well as keep all my existing inbound links from my old address(s).
So what are the Benefits of using a custom domain you might ask? Well, rather than repeat myself just read my other post 6 Reasons Why You Should be using a Custom Domain Name for your Blog and it will explain it all for you. Ok, have you read it yet? Good, now that I’ve convinced you let’s proceed to make the switch shall we?
Recently I was asking myself why does Alexa hate me? My odyssey started when I noticed my pal Mike over @ Twenty Steps blog score was almost as good as mine. That immediately got my competitive goat up, and digging a little deeper I noticed that he had a better Alexa rating than I did. So I decided to dig even deeper into the mysterious bowels of Alexa and find out why Alexa seemed to hate me so much.
Eventually I came across this Alexa faq:
“Alexa’s traffic rankings are for top level domains only (e.g. domain.com). We do not provide separate rankings for subpages within a domain (e.g. www.domain.com/subpage.html) or subdomains (e.g. subdomain.domain.com) unless we are able to automatically identify them as personal home pages or blogs, like those hosted on Geocities and Tripod. If a site is identified as a personal home page or blog, its traffic ranking will have an asterisk (*) next to it: Personal Page Avg. Traffic Rank: 3,456*. Personal pages are ranked on the same scale as a regular domain, so a personal page ranked 3,456* is the 3,456th most popular page among Alexa users.”
No wonder Alexa hates me. The poor girl is confused!
Ok, that was enough to convince me to take immediate action, and that my little experiment using my blog subdomain was a big mistake (i.e. blog.instabloke.com).
Even though I was using a custom domain, by using the subdomain blog it was splitting my pagerank stats for the same reasons that blogspot users are also being hurt. Don’t believe me? Then take a look at these Alexa stats:
Notice that it doesn’t even give stats for my old blogspot address? Crikey, Alexa doesn’t even recognize my blog! It only shows Blogger’s stats.
So what we have learned so far? It is imperative that you get rid of your old blogspot address and/or subdomains and use your own custom domain instead.
By fixing my DNS settings I solved three major problems:
- I got rid of the blog subdomain and I’m now using just the www prefix (i.e. www.instabloke.com)
- I also got it to work without the www prefix (i.e. instabloke.com) just in case someone keys it into the browser incorrectly.
- I kept all of my backlinks from my old subdomain blog as well as my old blogspot address so I won’t lose any of the links that you kind folks have given me. No links were broken and all of my older posts still work seamlessly just like it used to.
Ok, now try it out yourself. Click instabloke.com and you will see that it automatically redirects to http://www.blogbloke.com/.
Cool eh? You will also notice that it works for all of my older posts as well, so anybody who has linked to me before will not be broken either.
Ok, now let’s get down to business and let me show you how I did it:
1. Look at the following pic in my GoDaddy DNS settings.
CNAME Record:
Notice how the “www” points to Google’s host address - “ghs.google.com”.
A Record:
See how the @ sign points to GoDaddy’s forwarding IP address (check with your own domain name registrar for theirs).
2. Next, see the pic below showing how I setup forwarding of my custom domain name to the old blogspot address:
3. Now look at the following pic and see how I setup Blogger to switch to my custom domain. You might want to wait 24 hours before doing this yourself to allow your DNS changes to propagate.
Please NOTE: If you are having problems it’s possible that you may be using Google Apps for your domain, so you must disable it before Blogger will allow you to publish.
Now this is where it gets interesting. Check out my stats below in Google Webmaster Tools and see the difference it makes between using my old subdomain and the www prefix. First, take a look at the old blog subdomain:
Now take a look at the old blogspot address pagerank:
Both are showing my pages having a low pagerank. Now compare that to the exact same site with only the www prefix:
Notice how my pagerank has suddenly move up to medium? It’s the exact same blog, the exact same content and everything! Only the blog name was changed to the www prefix.
WOW! I’m sure that Alexa will now love me and my pagerank should continue to grow as I get reindexed by the search engines.
Are you convinced now? For your sake I hope so. Google has done you a big favor by giving you the option to host your Custom Domain for FREE!
One last thing. This might not apply to you but it will to some. Because I was using the subdomain blog, I had a unique problem. How can I get rid of it without also breaking all of my backlinks?
This is how I did it. I made another A Record with blog pointing to the same GoDaddy forwarding IP address like I did above:
So DO yourself a favor and move over to your own custom domain NOW!
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Thanks for this extremely helpful post, BB! I just followed your instructions on a brand new domain name (doublebassblog.org). One quick question–do I not have to mess with the nameservers in GoDaddy? I did last time, but everything got all messed up the last time I tried moving, so I’m not doing anything that you didn’t specifically post about.
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Hi Jason. You are very welcome.
I would just stick to the instructions that I’ve given because it is tried and true… and above all it works!
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Even I wonder that why people don’t make a switch to a top level domain when blogger is giving such a nice service and you are giving such a nice tutorial
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Beats me
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I wrote about improving Alexa rank the other week and it’s worked for me. Twenty Steps has gone from 369,523 to 158,146 in less than two months.
The main points are:
* Install the Alexa toolbar
* Add the widget to your site
* Regularly check your Alexa stats
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Bloke,
I was using subdomain “blog” like your blog. Now I’m using www. I made exactly same steps like you wrote above. But when I try to open blog.imessengr.com, it show a an error message : “This website is temporarily unavailable, please try again later.” The A record for subdomain is not on Pending Status. I hope this is a temporary problem. Did you have the same problem ? When it last longer, it will cause my pages removed from google.
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Hi Protesto. If you followed my instructions exactly then it’s probably because the DNS settings have not fully propagated yet.
Wait 24 hours and if still hasn’t resolved then you might want to contact your domain registrar to check it’s settings. Sometimes these things get stuck and need a little kick.
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Hmm. So Mike, if we scratch Alexa’s back, it will scratch ours? Doesn’t that lend credence to my belief all along that the blogosphere is indeed rigged.
Thanks for the tip bro.
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So I decided to scratch Alexa’s back and downloaded the toolbar..it wouldn’t work on Mozilla, only on IE, and I added the widget to the sidebar. I’ll let you know if my score goes up.
The custom domain switch will have to wait til I have a webmistress help me out!
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I just want to say that I’m not an Alexa fan and the toolbar is considered data mining spyware by some antivirus software. It can also slow your browser significantly when using it, so I’m not advocating that anyone install the toolbar.
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Rather than use the IE toolbar, install SearchStatus Extension for Firefox. It doesn’t slow the browser in the slightest and gives you some other great info including nofollow links, link reports and keyword density.
Adding the toolbar is a key part of improving your rank. Alexa is based on page impressions registered through the toolbar so without it on your own browser, you’re missing hits.
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Am I the only one who thinks that is a ridiculous way to determine the authority of a blog. It is biased and encourages everyone to game the system. No wonder I’m turning into such a cynic.
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I just moved my blog successfully to http://www.doublebassblog.org. Your advice worked like a charm–thanks a bunch!
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Woohoo! Another happy customer
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Bloke,
Do you have a cname record for blog pointing to @ as well ?
I still get the same error message (”This website is temporarily unavailable, please try again later.” ). I already asked godaddy support for help but they said that they don’t support customers if any customizations made on DNS settings. I already set all setttings back to default but it didn’t help…
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No, my settings are exactly as you see them. Blog points to the IP address 24.202.189.170 in the A Record. I should also point out that it goes in the A Record - not the CNAME Record.
Whomever you talked to at GoDaddy is giving you the runaround because they don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t understand the Google setup.
I had the same problem so I insisted on speaking to their best engineer. That’s how I got a hold of Art on the phone and demanded that it be fixed (in a nice, but assertive way :).
I recommend that you call Art to help you. He is a supervisor on the night shift (Pacific time) and is knowledgeable and also helpful.
Tell him that Blog Bloke sent you.
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“Am I the only one who thinks that is a ridiculous way to determine the authority of a blog. It is biased and encourages everyone to game the system. No wonder I’m turning into such a cynic.”
The roots of this are back in the mid 90’s when Netscape Navigator was trying to challenge Internet Explorer as the browser of choice for the geek generation. The Alexa toolbar was part of the installation for Navigator and so became used as a metric as far as the tech savvy users were considered.
When you think about it, it’s all very Firefox vs IE, isn’t it?
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Bloke,
I finally solved the problem. A Record “blog” didn’t work for me. Instead of this I’ve created a subdomain “blog” with subdomain control panel and redirected it permanently to www.imessengr.com . Now all my old links are back. Thank you for your help.
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Mike, I’ve intentionally avoided Alexa all these years because of it’s notoriety as being spyware. It’s really a shame that it has somehow entrenched itself as being necessary for some monetizing schemes. The same could also be said for services such as Technorati which has also been proven to be biased with its metrics as well as notoriously buggy.
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Protesto, the A Record is a better solution and should have worked. The problem has to be with GoDaddy and sometimes their settings need to be reset at their end. Nevertheless, if it is working for you and you are happy with it then that is great to hear. I would be interested in seeing your setup so would you mind sending me a pic by email for me to look at?
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Hey Bloke,
Our 2Dolphins is a Classic Blogger-based blog that’s FTP-published to our own domain. Been this way for over 3 years.
Am I deciphering what you’re saying correctly to mean that I can finally move up to New Blogger? There are a few of the features that I’m itching to use but thought I couldn’t do so…
I don’t have any big problems with (Classic) Blogger except for the clunky way it handles comments and the fact that I can’t seem to kill off the NoFollow code…
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I kinda equate Alexa ranking to those cheesy infomercials hawking “collectable” Nascar plates - that is, what makes them “collectable” is, well, that someone declared them to be so.
In other words, how much good does Alexa ranking do you anyway - or is it just some kind of a weak self-propagating hoax where we believe Alexa-originated hits to be important because, well, Alexa says they are? And since so many other bloggers have bought into the idea, it must be true.
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Hi Rob. New Blogger still handles comments the same way as classic does so you will get no benefit by moving over. You will however get the new features such as labels, widgets, custom domain for free, etc.
I couldn’t agree more with your assessment of Alexa. It’s all in the eye of the beholder. It’s the a-listers who have managed to game the system and use it to give the perception of its importance and their blog authority. And of course the rest of the sheep will follow the pied piper.
As for myself the only reason I’m showing interest is because I have to play the game if I want maximize the monetization of my blog.
It sucks, and don’t I know it.
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Thank you for this tutorial. I could not get my custom domain to work with blogger until I read (and followed) your post.
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You are most welcome Meena. Please drop by again.
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Nice little Alexa redirect on the header, BB
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I have poked around the internet regarding this subject quite a bit, and this is the ONLY post out there that provides a 100% effective method for successfully setting up a Blogger Custom Domain. Every other source (including Blogger itself) has some sort of screw-up. If I notice that a site is using a Blogger Custom Domain, I will often type in or leave out “www” (depending on whether or not it is in the address bar). Over 50% of the time (and this happens on fairly prominent sites) I will be redirected to a GoDaddy parked page.
Anybody who is planning on setting up a Blogger Custom Domain absolutely must follow this advice. It’s the only method out there that works flawlessly.
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Thanks Jason. I was also one of the frustrated and there was nothing out there that seemed to work or had all of the pieces to the puzzle. So I spent hours on the phone with GoDaddy’s top engineers (who didn’t know how to do it either) until we finally figured it out.
Cheers!
…BB
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What about those of us who don’t use GoDaddy? I am signed up with 1and1, and I can’t seem to get this problem resolved. Any suggestions?
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Unfortunately I haven’t used 1and1 so I can’t help you there. You will need total DNS control and if you have it then the procedure should be similar.
You will need to find the DNS control in your domain dashboard. Check their help files and if that doesn’t work then contact them. Telephone is best when it comes to these things otherwise you might be playing tag forever.
Refer them to this post if they still don’t get it.
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Thank you ever so much for this timely tutorial; it worked perfectly!
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Well, I tried to work with 1&1 and their technical support was not helpful. Now I am seriously considering transferring to GoDaddy. Do you think that’s the way to go at this point?
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I have all of my domains (last count around 20) with GoDaddy. Their prices are reasonable and they give you total DNS control. If I’m not mistaken they will also give you a sweet deal if you move your domain over to them.
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Thanks for dropping by tub and I’m glad that it helped.
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I’ve changed my url from blog to www like yours and I’ve noticed a huge increase on number of visitors. Thanks for this setup bloke.
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You are welcome Protesto. Did you notice that I also answered your question about titles:
http://www.Blog Bloke.com/2007/07/successful-blog-seo.html
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I already found this method on somewhere else, but thanks anyway. It will help others
Btw, if you use a header image instead of blog title, you’ll not use H1 tag anymore. So if you use H1 tag for post titles, wouldn’t be good for SEO ?
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Use CSS for your H1 tags.
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Thanks Bloke.
I have another question. Do these Alexa redirection links really work ? Did you notice a jump on number of visitors ?
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It won’t affect the number of visitors but the rank is improving.
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Blogger Bloke,
Will my custom domain name recieve the credit for my hits, or will search engines credit this to my blogspot address?
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Hi Nellie. I won’t argue with you that Blogger is probably a better choice over Wordpress free.
But the good news is you don’t have to switch hosts to enjoy control over your own domain name.
All you need is a few bucks (about the cost of a latee at Starbucks) for your own url and Blogger will do the hosting for you FREE!
Go for it girl and get some control back into your virtual life
Cheers!
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Yes, your custom domain will get the pagerank credit, and that’s the whole point for getting off blogspot.
Cheers!
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I would love to switch over to my own domain, but I’m stuck at .blogspot.com for one reason:
I’m broke. On a budget as tight as mine, the cost of domain name registration and hosting is just something I can’t do. I’ve owned my own domain(s) in the past (and blogged there using Moveable Type … this was back in the late 90s to about 2003 - when I had a nice job in web dev), and yearn for the respectability and legitimacy it would offer. Plus, I’d love to be able to be in control of my entire site - I hate running validators only to find that *my* code is good, Blogger’s isn’t. I’m in the process right now of becoming more serious about things, though … so when my current job search becomes fruitful, that may need to factor into my budget.
As far as site maintenance, the one thing that I like about Blogger is that the design (with exception of the nav bar) is completely under my control - I do use the classic style, and edit the HTML. As far as I can tell, with WordPress free this is either extremely difficult or impossible. The drawback is the inability to create static pages - I nearly switched over to WordPress free for this, but after looking into it, learned that they don’t allow advertising (the ‘group’ I’m involved with has some advertisers, who donate to charitable causes … but that was still a ‘no-go’ on the free site)… and the thought of not being in control of my design/content unless I pay bothers me. Still working this one out.
I’ve gone on much longer than I’ve intended, but wanted to add a reason that some people may not switch over. Also say that I just discovered the site, and appreciate the tips - so many places are focused on WordPress, it’s nice to be able to actually implement the strategies and not just go ‘well, yes… that would be nice, but…’!
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this is indeed a great tutorial..well explained.. and clearly written..
If I have discovered this 3 weeks back then perhaps I shouldn’t have encountered much problem with the famous www and without www problem when using the custom domain.. because I can follow step by step what you have written..
I’m using a domain from NETFIRM now and custom domain works fine with me.. with or without the WWW… with a cheap 4.75 dollar a year domain….
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Woohoo! And another happy customer
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What if we never had a “blog” subdomain. Do we still need to put “blog” in the A (Host) section? I have “www” directed to Google’s server in CNAME. I just forwarded my custom domain to my blogspot.com url. I still can’t get the no-www url to forward though. I’m hoping the settings will kick-in soon. Do I have to have a blog “subdomain” to have my www and no-www url to work? I think your discussion about a “blog” subdomain has me confused.
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Hi Tall Guy.
Like I said earlier, the “blog” subdomain issue is optional (only for those who are already using one). So in your case you can just ignore that part. But be sure to follow the rest of the directions exactly as shown.
Give your settings at least 24 hours (depending on your domain host) for the settings to propagate.
If it is still not working after 24 hours then go over the directions carefully again and make certain that you haven’t made a mistake. Otherwise, give your domain host a call and ask them to investigate because this definitely works.
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@Blog Bloke, similar to TallFreak, I also never had a blog subdomain. My address was just ctrl-shift-b.blogspot.com. I got a custom domain several months ago and lost all my backlinks.
You mentioned that you had to add another A record to preserve your backlinks. So, how do I apply these instructions? Any other advice on how to get my backlinks back?
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Derek Greer reply on May 31st, 2009 7:23 pm:
your solution was the easiest to follow out there and the only one that worked for me. thanks!
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That’s good to hear Echu and thanks for letting me know.
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Can you explain how you got it too work without the www prefix also? I have a domain already, but forgot to make it work without the www prefix. I use godaddy and blogger.
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Just follow steps 1 through 3 JohnS0N.
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I’m sorry, you only mention that you have setup to work without the www prefix, but not how you did it.
It is shown for the host name “www” which is pointing to ghs.google.com, there is no cname record for no www prefix. What is the name for that and does it also point to ghs.google.com.
I’ve read your whole post three times but can’t find this information, can you add it to the post?
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Hi johnsOn.
What I said was this method works “with or without the www prefix”.
If you are absolutely certain that you have followed the instructions exactly then the problem must be with your URL provider, i.e. GoDaddy. I cannot provide support for them.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but this post receives hundreds of hits per day and it most definitely works as you can see from all of the positive comments.
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I was under the impression that all I had to do is buy a domain from blogger and they would set it up. But after reading your post, Do you think doing this manually will be better? or the only way.
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Hi Curtis. Unfortunately it’s either my way or the highway. One million happy customers and counting can’t be wrong
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Thanks!
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I purchased my domain and went through steps 1 and 2 but while waiting for dns changes to take place, I tried typing in www.growingthumbs.com -my domain. And got a 404 error and then I typed it in without the www and I got forwared to my blogspot blog. Any Idea’s why it’s doing this? Thanks Blog Bloke
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Disregard the last comment, I did step 3 and everything works fine. Thank you! the address works with the www and with out the www. Same result. Again thanks!
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One Million and one happy customers!
Welcome to the community of professional bloggers Curtis. Cheers!
…BB
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Dear Blog Bloke,
I hate writing this. Everyone else has been so successful. I followed steps 1 and 2. When I do step 3 I get a page that says nothing is there (sorry, I don’t know what you call this). I’ve called godaddy twice. They say it is working and, sure enough, I can type in my custom domain name and it finds my site, only it still has the blogger address when in the address bar. Of course that’s because I switched back to host on blogger when step 3 didn’t work. I just tried step 3 again and then got the error page. The one thing that I can see that is different is that on godaddy my page doesn’t look like what you showed. On my page the www still point to @. I mentioned that to Nick (godaddy helper) and he said that didn’t matter with the way I was forwarding. Sorry to be so lengthy and possibley crazed. I just hoped you had a suggestion. Your whole post was so fabulous and made me so lust after my own custom domain name.
Blessings,
Sharry
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Hi Sharry. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you different. This method works and must be done exactly as shown.
Change your “www” prefix to point to the Google address as shown. Make certain everything else is exactly the same as well, then and allow 24 hours for it to propagate.
It will work… BB
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Thanks, Blog Bloke. The first thing I did this morning was look at your response. I will call godaddy again. I tried to do it on my own, but the @ wouldn’t budge. Looks like that is something from their end. The minute I found your site, I added it to my feed. Awesome!
~Sharry
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Sharry, if the “www” prefix is stuck then they will have to fix it at their end.
If the person at GoDaddy still gives you a hard time just tell him or her this setup has been ratified by supervisor ‘Art’, and hundreds of blokesters out there are currently using it.
Otherwise, demand to speak to a supervisor or Art himself if he is available.
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Dear BB
I am such a wimp! I hang my head in shame. D. at godaddy talked me into doing something called “masking” which he said would do what I wanted. My fingers are crossed that I won’t have to call them again. Shall I still do step 3 of your tried and true method?
~Sharry
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Sorry Sharry, but it sounds like you got a hold of another turkey. There’s lots of them around.
You should NOT mask your URL forwarding. That will defeat the everything.
I’m sorry to say this, but as arrogant as it may sound — it’s my way or the highway. Nothing else works, and hundreds of happy users will testify to that.
This post gets hundreds of hits a day and I’ve received just as many kudos because it really works. And it’s the ONLY method that works as promised.
So you’ve got to be assertive girl. Next time tell them to visit this post if they still don’t get it.
Geesh, they should be paying me for all the referrals I’ve sent them and they still can’t get it right.
Anyhow, you don’t need them. You can do it yourself in your own GoDaddy dashboard.
Go for it. It won’t hurt a bit — promise.
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Okay, I’m convinced. I’m about to leave town for a week, but as soon as I get back I will do exactly what you have said. You have been patient. I’ll let you know when it has been done right.
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Dear Blog Bloke,
True to my word, I’ve fixed my settings as your tutorial explained. While I was on hold with godaddy, I finally noticed what I needed to do to change it myself. Which I did. Now I will see if things are okay, even though they originally did the masking tactic. I so appreciate your guidance. I’m looking forward to reading your posts I missed while on my retreat.
Blessings,
Sharry
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Joe has advised me he got it working, but I want to take the opportunity to remind everyone that you should wait at least 24 hours for your DNS settings to propagate before assuming it isn’t working.
Patience. If you set it up exactly like I’ve shown it will work. Guaranteed.
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Hello Blog Bloke,
A commenter on my blog told me about this tutorial, which is a very informative and easy to use tutorial.
I use a slightly different method to ensure both the www and non-www url for my blog point to the same address. I set up the CNAME to point to GoDaddy, and used the free hosting provided by GoDaddy to set up a meta-redirect page to point non-www visitors to my www address. This also means I can use the remainder of the free hosting for images and scripts used in my site. This works a treat for me since my site is so complex!
Thank you for writing this tutorial though. You touched on some very useful issues I would like to look into further.
Best wishes,
Amanda
Blogger Buster
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Hi Amanda.
There’s always more ways to skin a cat, but like I said earlier if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The method that I’ve described here is tried and true, and hundreds of happy users can’t be wrong. So I’m recommending that my readers stick to the plan.
Thanks for dropping by and cheers.
…BB
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I found your site through Amanda at BloggerBuster. I love Amanda to death but I thought your way looked super easy. I have completed steps 1 & 2 and am now waiting the 24hrs before doing 3. I hope it works–judging by the comments, it does:)
Anyways, thanks for the tutorial.
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If you followed the directions correctly it will work … GUARANTEED. (How often do you get a guarantee like that
Thanks for dropping Lori and I hope to hear from you again soon.
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WOOHOO! I just wanted to follow up and say IT WORKED PERFECTLY! Thank you so much for your tutorial.
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So how’s that for a guarantee? Better than Ford, Chrysler and General Motors combined, and it didn’t cost you a penny.
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Do I need to change my alexa widget to the new custom domain? And to google analytics? Basically, do I need to change it everywhere now? I need to get my pagerank and alexa up now since it shows no data for the new domain.
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Yes, you should change all of your links to the new URL. I would also resubmit it to Googlebot to re-index your site again.
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hmmm.
Okay maybe I did something wrong.
I have lost my PR now back to non existent after just getting a 3. I no longer have alexa and the rating for my blogspot address is dropping steadily. I no longer qualify for any of the decent payperpost opps because I can only use my new domain as blogspot automatically redirects which is a nono with PPP. The only problem is the new domain has no PR and no alexa.
My questions are this.
What type of redirect do I use for forwarding the new domain to the old blogspot address? permanent right?
Second, in the publishing section on blogspot under where you enter the new domain name it says that it will automatically forward all traffic to the new domain. If I have set up all traffic to the new domain to forward to the old address how does this work?
Third, do I select the option to redirect the non www domain to the www domain in blogspot under where you enter the domain name?
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@Cmanlong, after reading the instructions here, I also was left with the same question. If my GoDaddy custom domain is forwarding to my old blogspot.com address and my blog forwards to my new custom domain, isn’t that a loop?
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Derek Greer reply on May 31st, 2009 7:17 pm:
I have followed your steps closely, it’s been over 24 hours but when I try to do step 3 I still get that nasty “Another blog is already hosted at this address” error, I thought google had long ago fixed that error, I was wondering if you knew what caused this and how I could fix it. Also one question that’s never covered, do you have to have google analytics set-up?
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Hi Flo. I thought that was fixed too. That has nothing to do with this setup. It’s a separate matter so I recommend checking Google Groups and see what others are saying about that issue.
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Hi Cmanlong. Just follow the directions here to the letter. Nothing more, and nothing less.
The redirect you mention is something new that Blogger has added after writing this post. I recommend doing it the way I mention in this tutorial simply because I know it works. Redirecting with your URL domain also keeps you in control seat instead of Blogger. If you try using Blogger as well there may be a conflict.
Also, as I explained the Alexa PR that you mention is a false reading. It was the PR for blogspot — NOT your blog. That is the point of moving over to a domain so that YOUR blog will be ranked and not blogspot.
Submit your new URL to Google and wait a while for it to reindexed and your pagerank will increase accordingly.
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Ah, I finally got it to work, Chuck from the blogger group has a good guide to fixing that monolithic error. You can find it here. And you can now see my shiny site here. Thanks everyone for all your help, especially you blogbloke!
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That’s great Flo. I thought I read a fix somewhere over there. You are very welcome and thanks for letting me know it worked out for you.
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Thanks so much! I’ve tried this another way and it was such a pain and took forever. Yours was so quick and works great!
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Excellent Kara. Now you have control over your own blog destiny. Drop by again.
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Bloke — You are my savior!!! I just moved to my new domain: junkdrawerblog.com and everything WORKS!!! Even when I enter it without the “www” prefix. I did have one problem that I resolved today. Apparently my domain was “parked” and I had to un-park it. After that, I went over to Blogger and did the redirect and now it works! You have NO idea how happy I am (well, maybe you do know). I’ve been so worried about making this change and must’ve looked at your tutorial a thousand times. Except for the parking thing, everything worked perfectly. YOU ARE THE MAN!! When we say grace at the Thanksgiving table tomorrow, it’ll confuse people, but I shall give a hearty thanks to The Bloke.
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Glad it worked for you Kathy! I knew it would
I’ve decided to close comments for this post. Lately some comments have been repetitive, off-topic or of nature that is beyond the scope of this article.
Thanks to everyone for participating and please be sure to follow my directions exactly. As you can see from all the testimonials of happy users - it works.
Enjoy… BB
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I’m a little confused by “GoDaddy’s forwarding IP address”. Are you talking about one of GoDaddy’s DNS servers IP address? I’m currently using Network Solutions. And not sure what address to put in.
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Sorry, but I’m not familiar with Network Solutions. You will have to contact them for the address. I believe GoDaddy is cheaper so it might be worthwhile switching over.
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Blog Bloke reply on September 12th, 2008 1:27 pm:
This is really helpful! Thank you very much!
r1ooooos last blog post…Serie A Week 4 Round-Up
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Hello! I’ve made the changes in my post and I hope it is fine. I wanted to inform readers that your writeup is the best one I’ve seen (and even followed).
Thanks a lot! I did not sound too sweet though. =(
Gems last blog post…How to Setup Custom Domain in Blogger (and Avoid Losing PR)
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Thanks Gem. If I’m not mistaken I was also the first to figure out the Custom Domain schmozzle. Glad to hear it helped you.
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Blog Bloke reply on September 26th, 2008 4:42 pm:
Do I need to submite new sitemap for my new domain?
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It wouldn’t hurt.
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Blog Bloke reply on October 11th, 2008 2:00 pm:
My only question is with the forwarding step…I’m hosting my site through Blue Domino & they do not have a ‘forwarding’ option, they have a domain pointer- is that the same thing? Do I need to do this step or can I skip it somehow?
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Then I recommend switching over to GoDaddy. I believe they have a $1.99 special for switching and they give a year plus whatever you have left on your existing account.
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Blog Bloke reply on November 3rd, 2008 2:09 pm:
Thank You so much! This may sound odd but- would it be possible for you to delete the comment I left where I left my blog address? I’d really appreciate it, it’s just a boring ole family blog
I will recommend your site to everyone I know!
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Done
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Blog Bloke reply on November 7th, 2008 3:40 pm:
I have domain PROARTFOTO.COM from godaddy.com that points to PROARTFOTO.SMUGMUG.COM. Now is it possible for my blogger address (PROARTFOTO.BLOGSPOT.COM) to be PROARTFOTO.COM/BLOG?
How do I set this up? How do I set up PROARTFOTO.COM/BLOG to point to my blogger address? Do I have to purchase a new domain?
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Hey man, thanks for the blogger help. I’ve written my own blogger custom domains godaddy instructions so hopefully we’ll get help to more people!
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Hola Blog Bloke,
I’ve succeeded publishing my Blog*Spot with a brand new domain name, with or without the w w w. But there are some problems on the template as you can see on the image below;
Is it the norm when publishing Blog*Spot to a custom domain name, your template will be in a mess like mine?
Do I have to change using Blog*Spot default template to fix the problem?
Any ideas?
That’s all for now, Blog Bloke. Hope to hear from you soon.
A belated blessed Christmas to you and your loved ones. Happy new year too.
Greetings and lots of love from Malaysia.
p/s Oh yeah, I’m hosting my blog with Blogger/Google.
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Hola Blog Bloke,
Sori for my earlier post. I forgot to close the image url. Here, I post it again. Hope i got it right this time.
I’ve succeeded publishing my Blog*Spot with a brand new domain name, with or without the w w w. But there are some problems on the template as you can see on the image below;
Is it the norm when publishing Blog*Spot to a custom domain name, your template will be in a mess like mine?
Do I have to change using Blog*Spot default template to fix the problem?
Any ideas?
That’s all for now, Blog Bloke. Hope to hear from you soon.
A belated blessed Christmas to you and your loved ones. Happy new year too.
Greetings and lots of love from Malaysia.
p/s Oh yeah, I’m hosting my blog with Blogger/Google.
ArahMan7s last blog post…Another Giant Step
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Hi there.
I clicked on your link and it looks fine from here. Switching to a top domain should not affect your template in any way.
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Hola Blog Bloke,
Thanks for the reply. Really appreciate it very much.
It’s ok now. I finally figured it out why my template was in a mess? You see, I’m using Francisco’s o2 Blogy template (a Wordpress theme turned to Blogger)and the images on the template had reached it limit Bandwidth making it disappear.
To fix that problem, I’ve to go through the whole xml codes on the template searching the images’ url so that I can rehost it back on my own Googlepages.
Hopefully it will not happened again or I’ve to find another site to host all the images.
A question - will My Journey To Recovery get back her PR5 like while she’s at Blog*Spot?
Right now on Google Webmaster Tools, pages of this blog are included in Google’s index but still no PR value.
That’s all for now, Blog Bloke.
I wish you peace, prosperity and much joy in 2009 and beyond.
Greetings and lots of love from Malaysia.
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ArahMan7 reply on December 31st, 2008 3:20 am:
Blog Bloke reply on December 30th, 2008 3:17 am:
Which redirect type did you choose? My Godaddy control panel for domain forwarding asks if I want to 301 or 302 redirect… Thanks!
-joe
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If your redirect is permanent then 301 would be appropriate.
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Blog Bloke reply on January 8th, 2009 12:31 am:
What a great article!
I do have a couple of questions. Why did you make your custom domain forward onto your blog.blogspot.com address. Shouldn’t you have just eliminated the forwarding from your custom domain to the blogspot address???
Second why did you have to do this:
“One last thing. This might not apply to you but it will to some. Because I was using the subdomain blog, I had a unique problem. How can I get rid of it without also breaking all of my backlinks?
This is how I did it. I made another A Record with blog pointing to the same GoDaddy forwarding IP address like I did above:”
Blogger now points all backlinks to your custom domain. I’m not sure if you knew this as this is an older post or maybe I’m not fully undertanding why you did this. It says in blogger that it will re-direct all blogspot addresses to custom domains to save your readers.
Question I have does it do all re-directs including ones people directly linked to post pages rather then blog address? I’m wondering how this works as I just did the custom domain change myself. Also does that mean that I am going to have to back in my html code and redo my meta tag optimization for post pages as my custom domain is now www.goldfishcareinformation.com instead of goldfish-care-information.blogspot.com. I’m really curious on how this all works as I do not want to lose page rankings.
If you can kindly help give me some more insight on how this all works that would be great. As of now all is changed for my custom domain but I did not forward my new custom domain to my old blogger adress, should I do this?
I appreciate any advice you have to offer. Thanks in advance and keep up the great work on your blog! You’ve definitely helped a lot of people for sure.
Sincerely,
Jamie Boyle
The Goldfish Guys last blog post…Melafix Bacterial and Fungal Fish Medication Treatment
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Jamie, if you didn’t have a subdomain name before then you don’t have to worry about that part which is optional. Regarding meta for posts I can’t comment because I don’t know what you did. If you follow the steps properly it will work and Google will follow the next time it indexes your blog. It may take a little time for it to adjust your pagerank accordingly. Don’t forget, your old pagerank was skewed because it was ranking your blogspot address instead of your own custom domain — which is a major reason for moving off blogspot in the first place.
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Blog Bloke reply on February 3rd, 2009 4:53 pm:
Hi! I’m a bit confused. If I change to custom domain, doesn’t blogger host for me? Must I register also with go Daddy, and if so, what do I do first? Transfer to custom domain in blogger or open in go daddy?
Thanks!
Francesco
Francescos last blog post…Turkish Anyone?
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Francesco.. GoDaddy will host your custom domain address, and Blogger will host your blog content. You need to keep them separate.
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Hi Blog Bloke,
Thank you for replying to my email. Now it’s clear! It appeared to me that they would host both. Now I understand that they will only host the content.
So, I guess I’ll sign up. I should sign up for GoDaddy first, then the custom domain on Blogger, right?
By the way, you feel GoDaddy is the best, better than Blue Host?
Thanks again!
Francesco
Francescos last blog post…Green Fashion… More Than Just a Color
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Blue Host is predominantly a blog host provider, although they do sell domains as well. I recommend GoDaddy for your custom domain only. I also recommend NOT giving control of your domain address to any blog host provider. Keep your custom domain provider and your blog host provider separate. It will be easier if you want to move to another blog host later.
So first get your new domain name at GoDaddy and set up your DNS settings like I show you above. After 24 hours change your Blogger settings to your new Custom Domain name. Presto!
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Hey! I did it and it’s working! Thanks! The only prob now is when I enter the domain name without www. I get error page. How can I correct that?
Thanks!
Francesco
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Congratulations Francesco. I hate to say I told you so ;-).
If you followed all of my directions correctly it should work with or without the WWW. Or you can check out this post if you are still having trouble:
http://www.blogbloke.com/redirect-you-blogger-custom-domain-to/
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I was just getting excited… Now, I’m totally confused!
My new custom domain was showing for hours,and now it has disappeared! Neither old nor new work. What should I do?
Francesco
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Probably just a glitch with the DNS settings propagating. Wait another 12 hours and contact GoDaddy if it persists.
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Blog Bloke reply on February 4th, 2009 10:54 pm:
I re-did everything and now the blog is showing with and without www.
Thanks again for your help!!!
Sincerely,
Francesco
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Francesco reply on February 5th, 2009 8:02 am:
Francesco reply on February 4th, 2009 6:09 pm:
Blog Bloke reply on February 4th, 2009 4:54 pm:
Francesco reply on February 4th, 2009 4:05 pm:
Blog Bloke reply on February 3rd, 2009 9:32 pm:
Francesco reply on February 3rd, 2009 5:55 pm:
Blog Bloke reply on February 3rd, 2009 4:55 pm:
Hi!
I wanted to thank you SO much for the most straight forward answers on this subject ANYWHERE. I had a devil of a time finding the right (easy-to-follow) instructions and then came across yours for re-direction. Wonderful!
My blog/site is still a WIP as I’m learning as I go. I have two issues that I’m really not sure how to fix. That is partly my lack of knowledge on this subject, but as I said…I am learning.
1) my www re-directs perfectly but w/o the www I’m a little lost. It still points to my old site (not the one re-directing to my blog). I’m sure I missed something here. How do I do that?
2) Domain is re-directed, but everything I want to do beyond that mydomain.net/other_pages.html points back to Blogger which says says the page does not exist. So, how can I make sure that all sub pages actually link to where I want them to go? (to my original links at my website)
I’ve probably just been at it too long and am not seeing the obvious.
Thanks again!
L
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@LMangue:
Hi there.
1. Did you follow steps 1 through 3 exactly? If you did it should be working without the www.
2. Have you waited at least 24 to 48 hours for everything to propagate? In most cases this is the reason if you have followed all of the steps correctly.
3. Can you tell me if you are you using Wordpress or Blogger?
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Blog Bloke reply on March 14th, 2009 11:29 am:
I have noticed that you can pay 10$/year to have your custom domain hosted directly through blogger. I’m not very tech savvy, and this option sounds simpler than the GoDaddy option you describe above. Would I still get many of the page rank benefits you are describing if I host my custom domain on blogger?
Thanks for the info!
Travis
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Help! I successfully moved my blog at http://thetigerroars.blogspot.com to my dedicated host at godaddy http://www.etherealexistentialism.com.
However, when I try to add it to google’s site index, it doesn’t work. I added a metatag but it doesn’t verify. I’m not very tech savvy, so any help would be appreciated!
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@manwithcake, your url is working fine so long as you leave out the period at the end. When you submit your url to Google don’t add any metatags. http://www.google.com/addurl/
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Blog Bloke reply on May 11th, 2009 5:42 pm:
I followed your instructions to the letter…but I still get a 404 without the www. It’s been 4 days.
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@manwithcake, I know it’s frustrating but you will have to go ever everything very carefully. Even the smallest character error can mess things up. This works because I use it and so have thousands of others.
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Blog Bloke reply on May 11th, 2009 5:44 pm:
Following these instructions:
Ok, now try it out yourself. Click instabloke.com and you will see that it automatically redirects to http://www.blogbloke.com/.
Leads to DNS 404 pages for each.
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@manwithcake, I think I mentioned earlier I turned it off because it has been more than a year now since I moved to a new domain and Google has reindexed everything. I also switched blog hosts since writing this article with redirects http://www.blogbloke.com/migrating-redirecting-blogger-wordpress-htaccess-apache-best-method/ and parked the old domain there.
Anyhow, for your benefit I have reactivated the custom domain. Within 24 hours it should propagate and work as promised. Start from the beginning and go over every step carefully. Like I said thousands of happy customers can’t be wrong.
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Blog Bloke reply on May 17th, 2009 12:55 pm:
This was really helpful and thank you for writing this. I have one question however. I was told to not put my blogspot address in the forwarding menu but rather the custom domain with the www in front of it. This was supposed to prevent domain.com (without the www) from taking you to godaddy’s parked page. Would I be sacrificing on for the other if I enter my blogspot address instead?
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Hi Ric, this is the best setup as far as I’m concerned and thousands of happy readers agree.
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Blog Bloke reply on May 23rd, 2009 9:36 am:
I’ll give it a go then. Thanks for your tips.
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BB, you are a GREAT man! And patient too!
Testing your patience one more time:
@ sign points to GoDaddy’s forwarding IP address ——– what is @?
or why @ is used in A Record and not &, or #, or else?
And another thing, blog on blogspot.com and blog on domain.com are the same/mirror. Aren’t google and alike punish mirror content or site users?
Thx a lot
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@V999, the @ symbol is just a pointer that is used by the domain host, much like it is used in an email address. Switching to a domain name from blogspot will not penalize you for duplicate content. The content is not duplicated .. only the domain is changed.
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@Blog Bloke,
Thank you.
I have a blog on spaces.live.com and a domain registered with another provider (not go daddy).
I am looking for a paid help with what you written above but for different blog host and different domain host. Can you pls help? If NOT, who can help me with all the settings?
details: http://view-details.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!38B4436780593C82!121.entry
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@V999, make certain your new blog host offers the option for a custom domain.
I recommend switching to GoDaddy for your domain because I know this works. I can’t guarantee this will work with other domain hosts.
GoDaddy offers a cheap option (for about $1.99 the first year last time I checked) to move your domain over to their control.
Once you’re with GoDaddy just follow the directions above and you’re done.
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Blog Bloke reply on June 28th, 2009 4:11 pm:
V999 reply on June 28th, 2009 3:30 pm:
Blog Bloke reply on June 28th, 2009 8:30 am:
Holy s**t…… I finally caught you alexa!! Yahooo!!!
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Jan 13th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
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