Tobold's Blog
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
 
DM Osbon is moving

DM Osbon, a fellow blogger, sent me a mail announcing that he moved his blog to http://sweetflag.wordpress.com/. In his first blog entry on the new blog he says: "Many of the subjects touched on in my previous blog will see the light again here but things at Sweet Flag will be documented very differently. More consideration to the words & less clutter when it comes to posting. Less of the ‘heavy’ look of the past & instead a minimal, easy to read blog in Sweet Flag."

Well, it's his blog, and if he wants a clean break from his old blog to make a new and better one, I wish him the best of luck. But of course it made me think whether that would be an option for me too, and the answer came up negative. By making a completely new blog you lose all your history, including whatever counter you use to count visitors, and your Google page rank. If I moved to a new blog, it would be very hard for my readers to find me, even if I leave a last post here pointing to the new blog. Sitemeter tells me that of the last 4,000 visitors an astonishing 59 came here by typing "Tobold" into Google. I'm a "brand name" now, although a very minor one. Making a new blog under a new name would destroy that brand. Making a new blog and still running under the name of Tobold would at least hurt the brand, because my page rank would go from five to zero, making it less likely that people find me when using other search words. Google has a scary amount of influence on what people read on the internet.

Now I could imagine one day *having* to move, a nightmare scenario: Blogger / Blogspot closes down or implements heavy traffic restrictions. But fortunately that isn't all that likely, because Blogger is owned by Google, who with a combination of being very rich and having a company motto of "don't be evil" can afford to offer free services indefinitely. I *do* make backups once in a while, just to be on the safe side, but I'm not too worried.

So if I wanted to redecorate and change my style, I would keep the old address and history, and just change the layout and how I write my new stuff. That would be a visible break, and have some influence on visitor numbers, but at least I wouldn't be restarting from zero.
Comments:
I found your blog when I went hunting for Karazhan information - I ended up at Cyndre's blog (http://cyndre.blogspot.com/) and I went through his Essential Worlds list.

That was only 3 months ago, but now I read your blog pretty much every day (or when I can remember to).
 
BTW, why is it "astonishing" that people find your blog by typing a keyword into Google?

For me the Google toolbar has become the central way of navigating the web. It's faster than finding a bookmark in a nest of "Favourites" submenus and much faster than typing a URL into the address bar or looking for a previous URL in the drop-down.

I'm in love with my Google toolbar....
 
I dont use Google like that and think the hits you get is a real acomplishment. BTW never move the blog, its great just where it is ;)
 
Yes Tobold you do lose your history I agree. I had 9 months with the previous blog & a number of things I wasn't to happy with even the name, which was my own initials & surname.

I had one post which was a poor post but google rated it high due to it's WoW connections. Even though they say ALL publicity is good I really was unhappy to be getting 'hit' 50+ times a day from it. It was a little albatross for me.

Thanks for your view Tobold.
 
I had one post which was a poor post but google rated it high due to it's WoW connections. Even though they say ALL publicity is good I really was unhappy to be getting 'hit' 50+ times a day from it. It was a little albatross for me.

Hehe, I know what you are talking about. I have a number of those albatrosses hanging around. I'm currently the number 3 hit on Google for "world of warcraft cancelled", with all the negativity that entails. And I'm not proud of the guild drama pieces either, they caused far too much hate.

But hey, I consider the blog as being a journal of my MMORPG history, and my mistakes belong into my history as much as my successes do. Even the negative comments are part of it. Won't it be fun in 10 years or so about what silly issues people all got so hot and excited about?
 
Your correct mistakes happen & with the blog still being young I thought it ideal to make the re-start. I don't intend to do it again, Sweet Flag is here to stay.

Do you thinking in 10 years blogging will be taken even more seriously? Could opinion then cause more than just angry comments on your post??
 
I moved a blog from Blogger to Moveable Type once, it was actually pretty easy. You can configure your Blogger output to a xml-like format that MT accepts and create an archive that has every post (or well you'd probably have to break it up I had only 200 posts or so). Then you just import this into the MT database.

I'm not sure of the exact format but it's out there on the web.

i thought sitemeter let you change the url it points to.

My biggest hit page mentioned Amanda Tapping in a post making fun of sci fi geeks like myself.
 
Sitemeter tells me that of the last 4,000 visitors an astonishing 59 came here by typing "Tobold" into Google.

Hey! That's me! Typing "Tobold" in Opera's search window is much easier than navigating the mountain of bookmarks I have. :)

I'm bit surprized the Google ratio isn't higher.

- Ikuturso -
 
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