Webmaster Tools verification errors

I changed my Blogger template, that caused Google Webmaster Tools verification error. I tried to reverify by meta tag, but reverification failed, the reason is "couldn't find the verification meta tag.

I checked the layout html code, and found Blogger actually altered the meta tag:

meta content='nLNz0zzW0vaKx-pIrbCsxkAx57GlUwiscsI2WHx-_A8' name='google-site-verification'

The order of "mata name" and "meta content" swapped, and double quotation marks has been changed to single quotes.

That's why Master tools couldn't find the meta tag!

Blogger in Draft has already integrated with Webmaster Tools, and verification can be done automatically, "Blogger in Draft dashboard to take you directly to Webmaster Tools. If you follow it, we’ll add all your blogs to Webmaster Tools and verify them for you automatically. " And the verification method is upload a html file which is already there, rather than by meta tag.

Blogger's robots.txt and sitemap

Robots.txt
If you are using blogger for your hosting you have a robots.txt file automatically, and can NOT change it.

To find the robots.txt, open up your web browser, and type in your Blogger blog’s URL, at the end of the URL add robots.txt.

For example, if the URL of your blog is http://myblog.blogspot.com, then enter http://myblog.blogspot.com/robots.txt

You may find the following entries:

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google
Disallow:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /search

Sitemap: http://myblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?orderby=updated

Mediapartners-Google is an Adsense crawler, which crawls pages to determine AdSense content. Google only use this bot to crawl your site if AdSense ads are displayed on your site. So the first two lines means your blog allow Mediapartners-Google to crawl blog contents, nothing are disallowed, so it's empty after "Disallow:".

"User-agent:* " means all search engine, a star sign '*' means all. The robots.txt instruct all search engines not to craw the subdirectory /search, the purpose is to avoid duplicate content. Your Blogger posts can be reached by archive date (normal), and also by label, each different label on any blog will result in a different URL pointing to the same post.

http://myblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/blogpost1.html
http://myblog.blogspot.com/search/label/label1/blogpost1.html
http://myblog.blogspot.com/search/label/label2/blogpost1.html
http://myblog.blogspot.com/search/label/label3/blogpost1.html

We can see there is only on URL named by date - if index only by date - each and every post has one and only one post date.

But, how many lablels you assign to your post, there will be same number extra URL point to the same post. "If the search engines were allowed to index by label (under /search subdirectory), they would see 6 extra instances of that post, one per label search. Since the post was already indexed by archive date, those 6 label search instances would be considered duplicate content. The search engines would penalise all 7 URLs for having duplicated content." (Blogger help forum)

Sitmap
Now about sitemap. You can find a line in the Robot.txt that starts with 'Sitemap:'. The URL after that label is the location of your sitemap.

"Using the example above, the line would look like:

Sitemap: http://myblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?orderby=updated

Back in Google’s Webmaster Tools, the domain name part of the URL would already be included, so you would just need to specify the feeds/posts/default?orderby=updated portion of the sitemap URL. "(Technically Easy)

You can also ignore this sitemap, anyway Google Webmaster tools will look at the robots.txt file for a sitemap if one isn’t specified.

Google Sitemap will accept all xml pages, you can submit your blog feed as sitemap URL, for example atom.xml.

Move your WordPress blogs over to Blogger

Hi, guys. Did you ever know we can move our Wordpress blog over to Blogger?

We know Wordpress provides a tool to import Blogger posts and comments, but Blogger hasn't provided us the same thing.

I found a great tool tonight, which can convert Wordpress blog posts/comments to the blogger format, then import into blogger. Well, the conversion will not include images and attaches, if you have shut down you Wordpress blog, and your attachment files no longer online, you have to do a bit more.

Here it is! But this hosted application will only allow downloads smaller than 1MB.

Hooray! I searched this kind of tools before, why couldn't I found?

Amazon’s Associate program with Blogger

Amazon’s Associate program announced the partnership with Google’s blog platform, Blogger. With just two clicks, Google Blogger users can now add revenue-generating Amazon product links to their blogs.

Amazon’s Associate program may not appear on blog that has already monetised with Google Adsense. One of my blog's Monetise Tab has been missing for long time, and no Adsense widget either. So I have to add Adsense html/Javascript code manually. But the Monetise Tab reappeared several days ago, to my surprise, this links to Amazon’s Associate program.

I have already two Amazon’s Associate program Tracking-ID, without realising they are different, one tracking ID ends up with "-20", signifying the North America region of the Associate, while another ends with "-21", signifying the UK region of the Associate. You can add another tracking ID of the same region, but it seems that you can't merge two ID of different region.

What we care most is the payment. There are three ways of referral fee payment: by cheque, Amazon gift card, and direct deposit to you bank account. The threshold of payment via Amazon.com site gift card or direct deposit is at least $10.00, and that of payment via check, is at least $100.00.

Google Chrome update itself without warning

Chrome update itself without warning, but it's not so "silently" and let me keep "using the browser without interruption", because the only thing I can do is just to look at my Good Old Laptop (more than five years), the hard disk indication light flashing, the cooler fan accelerated to it highest speed with squeaky noise, then a window pop up to let me choose "kill" or "wait" the web page in loading.

The updating normally starts shortly after I open chrome, it's quite frustrating to wait for it to finish updating, even worse when I did know this feature. I only found out this after my firewall program asks me if I let Chrome out to the internet because it has been changed.

This is said in the help document that Chrome use GoogleUpdate to check and install browser updates:

When you choose to install Google Chrome, GoogleUpdate is first installed if you don't have it already. It's then used to download Google Chrome and Gears, and install them on your computer. GoogleUpdate is also responsible for checking for browser updates. It does this by using the Windows Task Scheduler to run at periodic intervals. If an update is available, GoogleUpdate silently updates Google Chrome to the newest version so that you can continue using the browser without interruption.

But I can't find GoogleUpdate to change its setting if there is a choice, so I can be warned before an update.

The Google Maps API

When I tried to create a new post here in Blogger and I got the error message:

The Google Maps API server rejected your request. the "sensor" parameter specified in the request must be set to either "true" or "false".
I searched the internet, there are reports that this kind of error happened when people was trying to use Google maps in browser.

I don't remember I use any Google maps in my blog.

And in this post, people reported the same problem, and other issues:

when I go into the blog post, and attempt to set the locate for the post, using the Google Map API, it says:

"Couldn't find location, please try another query"

This same issue happens independent on browsers, such as Chrome, Firefox and IE.

Virgin Media Netgear Wireless Router Username and Password

As Virgin Media customer, if you find your wireless router is Netgear, then you may type the router's setup URL into a web browser address bar. http://192.168.0.1 is the default Netgear router IP address. http://192.168.1.1 will work for some Netgear models. Mine setup URL is http://192.168.1.1.

Then you are required to enter a username and password. If you haven't change the default setting, it is "virgin" and "password", you may find that on a label stuck on the router.

This default username and password of Virgin Wireless router is different from that of the normal Netgear router. The default username of Netgear is admin and the password is either password or 1234.

Then you open the configure interface, change the settings, such as change your DNS server to OpenDNS.

For a normal Netgear router, if you forget the username and password, you can reset and restore the NETGEAR device to factory default settings. But I couldn't find any button on my router. So I think I needn't to bother.