Do you have a Blogger(blogspot) Blog and do you know Google is deleting blogger blogs??

As usual, I was checking backlink tool to find some of the friends link (who has linked backed to me before) if they still have my link backlinked to me or not. Well, some of them didn't link back to me. I checked their site and the message I got upon visiting their blogspot(blogger) blog was something like "this blog has been deleted."
As I was visiting some of the other blogspot blog, I found few of them got deleted too. I thought, may be they got over blogging. Recently more and more blogspot(blogger) blogs are unavailable or being deleted. Now, these things forced me to think why those blogs are being deleted. I usually check official google blog for any kind of stuff they are upto. Their blog was shut down too(it's some days before), they are online now though. But, it's quite eerie because this very blog of mine is hosted on blogger's server too. I don't know what happened to their official blog but it's confirmed news they are deleting blogs.

Main Point: Google is intentionally deleting all those copy-cat blogs or say spam blogs. I used to think, it's just a snap to create a blogger blog. People create blogs and leave it unused. Spammers are using blogs to spam, plagiarism being even more daunting and scary part. They see wow, nice content, they copy ditto to their some other blog same information and when people search online, all result pages are filled with same repeated information. I used to think if Google doesn't think of this soon, their credibility might be at risk in near future. Now, this is the step which I didn't know but I had already expected from Google that they would do something for sure. And, they are taking necessary measures to maintain their status by weeding out all those fake blogs that they think are.

Reasons your blog might get deleted(Blogger TOS):

1. Too much advertising campaigns. You watch ..say ..50 minutes TV show and you ended up watching 60 minutes commercials in addition. Would you like that?? tell me seriously!!! You wouldn't .. So, get rid of those nasty ADs. Precisely, Get rid of p.-a|-y-p-e-r-p-o-|s-|t things from your blog.

2. If your blog is just copy-n-paste blog, then you are on their hitlist.

3. Blogger(blogspot) allows porn blogs but first read their TOS. Porn blogs are often deleted with a cause.
Google states:
PORNOGRAPHY AND OBSCENITY:

* Pornography and Obscenity: Image and video content that contains nudity, sexually graphic material, or material that is otherwise deemed explicit by Google should be made private. Otherwise, we may put such content behind an interstitial.
* Pedophilia, Incest and Bestiality: Users may not publish written, image or video content that promotes pedophilia, incest and bestiality.
* Commercial Pornography: We do not allow content that exists for the primary purpose of monetizing porn content or driving traffic to a monetized pornography site.
* Child Pornography: Google has a zero-tolerance policy against child pornography, and we will terminate and report to the appropriate authorities any user who publishes or distributes child pornography.

4. If your blog is posting copyrighted materials without permission.

5. I think you can't change the Blogspot's basic engine. I suspect if you replace their system with some other engine,you are at risk.

6. You can't have blog which promotes terrorism and DIY(Do-It-Yourself) content on such.

7. 'Made for Adsense' blogs are their main target. There are blogs, which do not use any genuine contents but what they do is just put the Adsense scripts on unethically borrowed content. Their only motivation is to earn easy money thereby making advertisers loose their cash and credible customers.


How to be safe and sound?

Avoid all those above mentioned things from doing. But, I'm not sure of my blog either. Because, I just came to know that their own official blog got deleted by mistake. Somehow, if you think that your blog got deleted and YOu think you never dishonored their TOS, then you can make a request to reclaim your blog. When they delete your blog, all your contents won't wipe out right away. It's just you can't have any control on your old blog.

How to Contact Blogger Support?

Click here to Contact Them (blogger team) for any issues

Click here to Reclaim your blog

Can you backup your blogger blog??

It's not an easy task but if you are determined, then you can back up your blogger (blogspot) blog in following ways:

- Send posts to be delivered right on your mail inbox everytime you publish a post.
Change your Email address where you want to receive your own posts. (dashboard->settings->email->blogsend address). This is one easy way to get your posts right on your inbox. For pictures, download them all from picasa.com. There you use the same usr/pwd as you log in to blogger.com and get all your pictures downloaded to your harddrive. It's a manual and hectic process but as I already mentioned only if you are determined.

- OR you can use Blogger Backup Utility. This utility helps you backup your all blog posts at once. Just in case you know. It backups in XML format, easier for your to automate restoring task later on.

- To restore your blog, you've to use manual effort. You can't restore all blog posts at once because, blogger has restrictions that how much posts can you make within 24 hours. And, it's not as easy as like database migration. It's much more harder than that.

Last Words,
If these restrictions are giving you a good whirl inside your liberal mind, it's time to move to new home. You can have your own host.

Why I stick to blogger??

- I'm Google's fan.
- Since Google's blogger is managed by Search Engine Giants, it's more likely to be indexed faster.
- I don't have to worry about bandwidth exceeded issues
- It's support and knowledge base is huge
- It's extremely easy and customizable.
- It's Adsense friendly
- .... it's free. (thanks Google)

That doesn't mean I'm limited to blogger engine only.


Thank you for reading this post.

Posted by Navin at Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Labels: Blogging Tips