"HOW" - "HOW TO" - "HOW DO"

This Quick-Tip is about how to see the posts you made in Google Groups - in particular in the Blogger Product Forum. I used to be quite active in the previous Blogger Help Forum.   But since they switched to the new Google Groups based Blogger Product Forum , I've been less enthusiastic: The design doesn't work as well on the netbook that I use a lot of the time It wasn't easy to look up questions that I'd answered previously to see whether the answer was helpful.    The old system used to tell me that there were new posts in topics that I'd posted in, so it was very easy to go back and either give more help (kind of "after sales service") or hear from people who I'd been able to help (good motivation for helping other people.). Today I noticed that a feature which is almost as good has been introduced to Google Groups. The l eft-hand navigation area now has an entry for "My Discussions".   Choosing it shows all posts with author:me.  This is

This Quick-Tip is about accessing your own YouTube videos, using Google's Takeout / Data-liberation service. If you upload a video using the Blogger Post Editor's video icon, then it's stored in Google Videos - which is now retired except for the part that hosts vids uploaded thru Blogger.   (This was where they were being put  the last time I checked, which was a few months ago) Many people dislike this, and prefer to upload their vids to YouTube first, and then link to the YouTube video from Blogger.  This gives Better control over the size of the video you display in your blog / website Video management tools (sorely lacking in Google Videos).  Statistics about viewers The chance to earn money separately from your blog if your video becomes popular Access to many more YoutTube features. This is similar to the recommendation to upload pictures to Picasa independently of the post-editor, and putting them into your posts via the URL - it just gives you more control. Now  

This Quick-Tip describes the alerts that Webmaster Tools are now offering for changes in search popularity of particular pages. Google Webmaster Tools have added to their alerts features. Basically, this means that they try to notice the changes "that could be most interesting for you", and send the website owner a message when they spot something. You can view these messages in the Webmaster tools site, or by signing up inside Wesmaster Tools to have alerts forwarded to your email. The newest(*) alert they added is for Search Queries.   ref:    http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ie/2012/08/search-queries-alerts-in-webmaster-tools.html This features shows "impressions and clicks for your top pages over time." They say "For most sites, these numbers follow regular patterns, so when sudden spikes or drops occur, it can make sense to look into what caused them. Some changes are due to differing demand for your content, other times they may be due to technical

This article is about how to use a domain (URL) that was purchased outside of Blogger / Google as the custom-domain for your blog.   Blogger and custom domains Until September 2012, the easiest way to give your Blogger blog a custom domain was to pick an URL that is currently available and purchase it through the Settings > Publishing  tab.   If that is s successful, all you needed to do was set up an administrator account for your domain . But sometimes the URL you want will not be available through Google / Blogger: Maybe it's owned by someone else Maybe you own it  already, because you purchased it through another domain registrar.   Maybe you don't have a credit-card so cannot purchase through  Google.   Maybe it's for a country that Blogger doesn't sell domains for (eg Ireland). Maybe it's now well after September 2012, and Blogger have not re-introduced this service - and don't look likely to do so. In these cases, you can't use Blogger to manage

This Quick-Tip shares an interesting observation about the trends in search-volumes - and is a reminder to think about what your blog is like for readers who use mobile devices. Today I noticed an interesting post from on-line marketing firm Blind Five Year Old, who've been tracking comScore search-engine ratings for seven years. comScore's ratings are all about relative market share of the search-engines. But BFYO has used them to  look at overall search engine volumes  and has noticed that August 2012 was the first time that US desktop search volume declined year-on-year This means that there were less desktop searches (in the USA) in August 12 than there were in August 11 . Year-on-year comparisons are often better than monthly ones because they can cancel out the effects of seasonal patterns (holidays, starting school, major events, etc) Now this doesn't mean that people have stopped doing more searching than before. Most likely it means that they've started to