Blogger Sitemap


XML Sitemaps help search engines better index your blog or website. Sitemaps are supported by all major search engines including Google, Bing and Yahoo.

With the Blogger Sitemap Generator, you will be able to create a valid and complete XML sitemap for your blog. Just type the full web address (URL) of your blogger blog, press the Create button and then add the sitemap to Blogger.

The tool can generate Google XML Sitemap for Blogger hosted blogs (like labnol.blogspot.com) as well as self-hosted Blogger blogs (like postsecret.com) that run on Blogger.com but with a custom domain.

Internally, the tool parses the default XML sitemap to determine the total number of blog posts in your blog and splits them into multiple sitemaps each having 500 entries.

The tool was created by Amit Agarwal on October 02, 2009.


The XML Sitemap file is like a directory of all web pages that exist on your website or blog. Search engines like Google and Bing can use these sitemap files to discover pages on your site that the search bots may have otherwise missed during regular crawling.

THE PROBLEM WITH BLOGGER SITEMAP FILES

An complete sitemap file should mention all pages of a site but that’s not the case if your blog is hosted on Blogger.

The default XML sitemap file of any Blogger blog will have only the 26 most recent blog posts – see example. That’s a limitation because some of your older blog pages, that are missing in the default XML sitemap file, may never get indexed in search engines. There’s however a simple solution to fix this problem.
GENERATE A COMPLETE SITEMAP FOR YOUR BLOGGER BLOG

This section is valid for both regular Blogger blogs (that use a .blogspot.com address) and also the self-hosted Blogger blogs that use a custom domain (like postsecret.com).

Here’s what you need to do to expose your blog’s complete site structure to search engines with the help of an XML sitemap.
Open the Sitemap Generator and type the full address of your blogspot blog (or your self-hosted Blogger blog).
Click the Create Sitemap button and this tool will instantly generate the necessary text for your sitemap. Copy the entire generated text to your clipboard (see screenshot below).
Next go to your Blogger dashboard and under Settings – > Search Preferences, the enable Custom robots.txt option (available in the Crawling and Indexing section). Paste the clipboard text here and save your changes.

And we are done. Search engines will automatically discover your XML sitemap files via the robots.txt file and you don’t have to ping them manually.


PS: If you have switched from Blogger to WordPress, it still makes sense to submit XML sitemaps of your old Blogspot blog as that will aid search engines discover your new WordPress blog posts and pages.


Prevent Blogger from Redirecting your Blogspot Blog to Country-Specific URLs
Written by Amit Agarwal on Sep 9, 2015

Google now redirects Blogger blogs to country-specific domains. For instance, if you open example.blogspot.comin your web browser, you will be redirected to example.blogspot.in if you are located in India or to example.blogspot.co.uk if you are accessing the blog from UK.

Google does country-specific redirection for selective censorship – that means they can easily censor or block a blog post, or other entire blog site, in one country but still serve that page in other geographic regions. Blog redirection only occurs if you are on a blogspot domain and not if your Blogger blog is on a custom domain.



My traffic logs suggest that country-specific redirection in Blogger is live in at least 15 countries. They are India [blogspot.in], Australia [blogspot.com.au], UK [blogspot.co.uk], Japan [blogspot.jp], New Zealand [blogspot.co.nz], Canada [blogspot.ca], Germany [blogspot.de], Italy [blogspot.it], France [blogspot.fr], Sweden [blogspot.se], Spain [blogspot.com.es], Portugal [blogspot.pt], Brazil [blogspot.com.br], Argentina [blogspot.com.ar], Mexico [blogspot.mx]
PREVENT BLOGGER FROM REDIRECTING TO COUNTRY-SPECIFIC DOMAINS

This country based URL redirection is likely to impact your Blogger blogs in a not so positive manner. For example:
The social stats – like your Facebook Likes, Google +1s and Tweet counts – for your blog posts may be reduced as the URLs for the same blog post will be different for different visitors.
You will have a similar problem if you are using an external commenting platform like Disqus or Facebook Comments because the blog URLs will be different even when the underlying page is the same.
Also, if canonicalization isn’t implemented properly, it may cost you some Google juice as external websites may link to your country-specific pages.
Some users have reported a dip in Google AdSense earnings when pages are served through country-specific domains.

If you are not happy with the idea of Blogger redirecting your blog to a different URL, you can add the following piece of code to your Blogger template and it will always serve the .com address to your visitors irrespective of their geographic location.

Go to your blog inside the Blogger Dashboard and choose Template. Then click the “Edit HTML” button followed by “Proceed.” Next, copy-paste the following code into the template after the <head> tag.

<script type="text/javascript"> // Written by Amit Agarwal /* Get the full URL of the current blogger page */ var blog = document.location.href.toLowerCase(); /* Do not redirect if the domain is .com already */ if (!blog.match(/\.blogspot\.com/)) { /* Replace the country TLD with .com and ncr switch */ blog = blog.replace(/\.blogspot\..*?\//, ".blogspot.com/ncr/"); /* Redirect to the new .com URL in the current tab */ window.location.replace(blog); } // Source: http://labnol.org/?p=21031 </script>


Click the Save Template button and now your Blogger Blog will always serve with the blogspot.com URL.

The JavaScript snippet gets the URL of the current Blogger page and if it isn’t served from the .com domain, the code replaces the country specific TLD (like blogspot.co.au or blogspot.pk) with the blogspot.com URL. It also adds the /ncr switch to force-redirect the visitor to the blogspot.com address.

[5/4/2015] – The snippet is now more efficient and can handle both www and non-www blogspot URLs including those served from secure HTTP (https).

[11/9/2015] – Code fixes

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