Sciencetext Tips & Tricks

Tech talk, social media, blogging, computing tips and tricks

Blogger Custom Domain

January 15th, 2007 · by David Bradley >> 80 Comments

    WARNING: This is an old post, blogger no longer allows 301 redirects.

    Blogger logoAs many of you will know, Significant Figures was originally hosted on Google’s Blogger Blogspot system. Well, finally they upgraded to allow bloggers to use their own domain names without losing all the page rank their blogspot blog had gained over time. So, finally, Sig Figs is now part of the ScienceText.com site and is boulstered by two new categories to deal with general gripes and PC tips. This post, as you will see is a PC tip, helping Blogspot bloggers transfer to a new system running WordPress on their own domain without all that CNAME editing they talk about.

    Here’s what to do.

    First. Back up your blogger template. Then if you’ve got a switch to Blogger 2 option do just that. (If the option doesn’t show up just yet be patient, it will as Google rolls out version 2).

    Second. Load up WordPress in your domain and import all posts and comments from your Blogger blog, using the import Blogger blog option.

    Third. Log back into your Blogger account and go to the blog “Settings” tab and from their “Publishing”. Click “switch to Custom Domain” and enter the URL for your imported WordPress blog and save.

    Fourth. Enter your old blogspot address in your browser, it should instananeously redirect to the new WordPress version of your blog.

    Google has states that your blogger blog page rank and search engine status will be maintained if you’re using a custom domain. This now avoids the duplicate content penalty that is often observed if you try to simply redirect a Blogger blog using a meta redirect. It’s always best in terms of search engine status to use a 301 redirect. When I tested the old Sig Fig address with this redirect check tool it shows the header to be a 301 redirect, which is exactly what we’re after for SEO.

    Blogger itself offers alternative instructions on how to use a custom domain that involve editing CNAME in the DNS settings for your domain. Now, these apply only if you want Blogspot to continue hosting your blog files but with your own domain in the address. I’d not recommend that approach as you don’t then have total control over your blog, although there will be hosting costs to take into consideration should you wish to choose my route.

    In order to make this work fully, you will, however, have to edit your WordPress .htaccess file and add some rewrites to make bookmarks from individual posts work.

    80 responses so far ↓

    • Paula Mooney // Feb 23, 2007 at 6:33 pm

      God bless you! God bless you! God bless you!

      This is exactly what I’ve been looking to do, without all that other hassle.

      I’m going to try it your way, I believe.

      But how exactly did you edit your “htaccess file and add some rewrites to make bookmarks from individual posts work” ?

      And ScienceText.com was a WordPress.com site already right?

      Hosted by whom?

      I really want to know everything before I do this…

      Thank you so much!
      Paula

    • Paula Mooney // Feb 23, 2007 at 6:38 pm

      Oh yeah, and was there any down time between all these steps?

      And what do you mean Blogger 2? I already upgraded to the new Blogger Beta which is just the new Blogger now. Is that what you mean?

      And are your Google Adsense ads paying better since the switch like other people are saying theirs are?

      Or at least one did, the other said his ads are more “intuiative”…

    • David Bradley // Feb 23, 2007 at 10:35 pm

      Yes, I’m referrring to the new blogger. Sciencetext.com was a standalone domain I owned with a static site previously that I upgraded to WordPress and then transferred the old Sig Fig files…

      I didn’t get round to the .htaccess messing, but it’s on the web and not hard to do.

      As to adsense, I didn’t have adsense on the old blogspot site, so nothing to compare with, not sure what that intuitive thang is either.

      Good luck

      db

      PS You need to tidy up your layout, it’s all shoved over to the right in Firefox

    • Paula Mooney // Mar 3, 2007 at 1:52 pm

      Thanks. I changed my blogger template to a cleaner one.

      Is it still shoved over on Firefox or does it look better now?

      Paula

    • ilker // Mar 3, 2007 at 4:45 pm

      This is interesting.. will refer to it in the future!

    • David Bradley // Mar 21, 2007 at 8:20 pm

      This popular Sciencetext post is getting a lot of commentary from other blogs, particular blogspot blogs where users are discussing how to break free and relocate to their own domains.

      As far as I know, what I suggest here is perfectly legal. Google new Blogger offers users the option to host their blogs on their own domain and provides the tools to do a 301 redirect to the new hosting so that all kudos (pagerank) is carried over from the old blogspot domain to the new hosted domain. All I’ve done here is to host the actual files on my own server and to 301 redirect to the index on that new hosted domain from my old blogspot address. I’m actually doing Google a favor by covering the hosting costs they would otherwise have to pay for, surely? More to the point, they still get to have the pleasure of this blog appearing in their index.

      What’s the difference between doing this and doing the old hosting like you could before, except the files now point to my own domain instead of a blogspot sub-domain.

    • Vinay // Mar 30, 2007 at 3:15 am

      Great post. Yesterday i registered a new domain name and was very excited to move my blogspot blog there. but soon I realized that I will loose the PR and those 50 thousand backlinks I generated over a period of time. I am talking of huge numbers here and I dont wan’t to lose them by moving to custom domain. Your idea sounds great and investing some money in my own hosting isn’t gonna cost me much.

      However just wanted to clarify a few things. As you said that PR will be maintained. Did you get the same PR? I am sure u got it but just checking.

      What about those backlinks pointing to blogspot address…will they still be maintained?

      Do we need to change google sitemap account to access new domain or keep it on blogspot? Should we delete all the posts once we move to new wordpress hosting?

      I would be grateful if you can answer these questions since you did all yourself. Thanks a ton and wish you good luck with this blog.

    • David Bradley // Mar 30, 2007 at 6:16 am

      The backlinks and the PR will follow your redirect. BUT, they take time, months sometimes. You have to make sure you’re clever with the .htaccess rewrites to ensure all old post filenames get ported to the new ones too.

      You had 50000 backlinks to a blogspot blog, why do you want to move and risk losing those if you make a mistake with the rewrite. With that number of backlinks you are probably already making a few thousand a months from text ads, aren’t you? Somehow I get the feeling you’re yanking my crank.

    • Mark C // Apr 11, 2007 at 3:26 am

      “Somehow I get the feeling you’re yanking my crank.”

      What’s a crank? lol.

      My baseball blog has plummeted since changing to custom domains. Pagerank 5 to 0, no backlinks. Heck. Google can’t even cache my new address. This is disastrous to say the least. One can only hope that Google fixes these problems.
      :/

    • David Bradley // Apr 11, 2007 at 7:27 am

      Give it time Mark C. As long as you did a 301 permanent redirect on the original URL you should be fine. Google takes its time doing updates and presumably you haven’t actually yet lost PR or backlinks on the original URL.

      By the way, a crank, is a handle that provides what one might term rotational leverage around an axis. Cranks are common on machinery that has to be “kick” started (or hand-cranked) to initiate engine turnover.

    • Goyal // Apr 17, 2007 at 2:59 pm

      Hi,

      I have a domain name (bought from Google) and a blog on wordpress.

      I want to shift my blog to Blogger and access it at blog.mydomain.com

      Can you please tell me how to do this?

    • David Bradley // Apr 17, 2007 at 3:40 pm

      Goyal, this is probably what you need: http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=55373&query=domain&topic=&type=f

    • Goyal // Apr 18, 2007 at 7:26 am

      Hi David,

      Thanks a lot :)

      I would be migrating the blog soon.

    • David Bradley // Apr 18, 2007 at 7:48 am

      Good luck Goyal, please double check procedures before making the move (don’t rely on this page alone), just to be safe.

    • lasilasi // Apr 20, 2007 at 6:46 am

      i am looking at switching to custom domain, since blogger has got this new (and looks like easy to use) feature. After purchasing lasilasi.com from godady, I edited the cname’s host:’www’ and point to:’@’ to ‘ghs.google.com’. Next, i go to ‘publishing’ in blogger and filled in lasilasi.com as the custom domain.

      Then when I typed in lasilasi.blogspot.com, i successfully got directed to lasilasi.com. However, the blog content is not there (which therefore I switched back to blogger). There’s no description that shows that I need any other settings – i googgled on it and found yr blog entry that explain setting up wordpress to import blogger blog. Hmm word press – havent used before – i wonder would it be time consuming to learn/use it – and is it really necessary? Also, if I use word press, would i still be creating post from blogger’s interface or from wordpress?

      Please enlighten me… I hope I can switch to lasilasi.com soon! i tried having ‘quick blog’ set up with godaddy. there’s an option that says ‘import entries’ however, when i need to key in the ‘URL of RSS feed’ (ichose Generic RSS – there’s typepad etc other options too) i m not sure what to key in – i tried with lasilasi.blogspot.com and doesnt work (obviously). I’ve feedburner but when i key in http://feeds.feedburner.com/Lasilasi it doesnt work either.

      Pls help. thanks very very much!

    • David Bradley // Apr 20, 2007 at 8:45 am

      Lim

      I’m not sure I follow what you’ve done wrong. Google is quite explicit in its instructions. You can either host the files on Blogspot and have the blog point to your new domain or else publish the blog via FTP settings in Blogspot to the new domain, which means you will need to actually upload the files to your new host. If you don’t then there’s basically nothing there for you to see. Check back with the Blogspot FAQ again for more info.

      My original post is about 301 redirecting from an old Blogspot blog to a domain running different blogging software. It’s irrelevant that I happen to use WordPress. You could if you wanted redirect a blogspot address to a simple static page, doesn’t even have to be a blog.

    • lasilasi // Apr 21, 2007 at 8:20 am

      thanks for the reply – i m much clearer now =)

    • David Bradley // May 1, 2007 at 2:08 pm

      Quick update: In the most recent pagerank dance on the Google data centers, Sciencetext suddenly leaped from a whitebar site to a PR5. The old Blogspot version of the site only ever made it to PR4, so that’s pretty encouraging and should help persuade others of the value of switching to their own domain and 301′ing their old blog to the new domain.

    • Scott Warheit // May 4, 2007 at 6:19 am

      This is a great help. I recently started a Blog on Blogger, and get a decent amount of traffic (at least for a new, small blog like mine) from Google, where some of my posts are in decent spots. A few days ago I purchased a domain, wanting to forward the Blogger blog to that domain, while remaining hosted on Blogger. I’ve searched all around the internet trying to find out whether doing so would wipe my Google listings out for my Blogger address out of existence, but according to this post/thread, I shouldn’t worry, right? By using the Blogger custom domain option, it’ll ensure the listing aren’t negatively affected by the move, right? I know Blogger seemlessly forwards the links/traffic to the new domain, but I was worried about losing the Google listings.

      Thanks a lot for the help.

      -Scott

    • David Bradley // May 4, 2007 at 7:47 am

      Nothing is guaranteed in this life Scott, but see my comment dated May 1 for the results I have seen. It took maybe three months and the April PR update for rank to migrate from my old Blogspot blog to this domain, but it worked. Another pertinent aphorism – good things come to those who wait and a rolling bird in the bush is worth two in the bed, not in this game.

    • Vin // May 7, 2007 at 3:21 am

      Hi,
      Got the answers to the other questions. Only one last question :
      What would be the ideal host in terms of optimizing costs with the
      facilities offered?

      Cheers.

    • David Bradley // May 7, 2007 at 9:15 am

      Vin, I think you’d have to check the PC magazines and sites for comparison tables of hosting companies in your country. I use various hosts for different sites. All have their pros and cons.

    • David Bradley // May 16, 2007 at 10:44 am

      The latest release – 2.2 (on 2007-05-15) of the WordPress blogging software has several new features, such as built in widgets, but of most interest to readers of this post, it has an improved Blogger Blogspot import system.

      The new Blogger importer can handle the latest version of Google’s Blogger product and seamlessly import posts and comments without any user interaction beyond entering your login.

    • Rahul Bansal // Jun 19, 2007 at 2:42 pm

      I got following error after I imported my old blogspot to new address and wordpress platform!
      “Another blog is already hosted at this
      address!”

      I am using META tags to 301 permanant redirect!
      But this is to let u know that u can’t perform step4 in the end!

    • David Bradley // Jun 19, 2007 at 3:54 pm

      Rahul, I didn’t anticipate anyone trying to import a blog into a blog that already exists…that doesn’t make sense, does it? The thing is, you see, I did the steps my self for this site and it worked just fine.

      Incidentally, you cannot use a meta tag to do a 301 redirect. A 301 redirect has to be done from the blogspot tab that points to your new domain.

    • palinn // Jul 13, 2007 at 7:03 am

      Hi David,
      Any idea if we have to resubmit our new site url to google analytics, sitemaps, yahoo, technorati, and all the others.

      Cheers.

    • David Bradley // Jul 13, 2007 at 7:39 am

      If you’ve done a 301 redirect you shouldn’t have to, no. If you resubmit to technorati you will end up with duplicated entries, for instance. It might be worth editing your Analytics settings to refer to the new URL, and I would probably redo your sitemap and resubmit to Google/Yahoo. But, I don’t think any of that is essential. Anyone else disagree?

    • SEO guy // Sep 4, 2007 at 7:54 pm

      One of the main reasons to get off blogger is that it gives you no control over your title. title is critical to seo

    • Zaldy // Oct 6, 2007 at 9:47 am

      I read your post about using custom domain..and I agree in all that you’ve said..

      2 months back I moved my Blogspot blog to my own domain http://www.ofwlayf.com but until now..(2 months later) my custom domain page rank is still 0,

      am I missing something?.. please advice..

      I’d appreciate your attention, thanks much in advance,

      best regards,
      zaldy agustin

    • David Bradley // Oct 6, 2007 at 9:49 am

      Zaldy, there hasn’t been a Google pagerank update for months, and Google staffer Matt Cutts reckons it won’t happen for weeks yet, so be patient and you’ll probably see the date before the end of the year.

    • cityslicker mom // Dec 4, 2007 at 9:33 am

      Dear David,

      The lack of your method is, the specific post at the old blogspot will redirect to the main domain address not to the same post with wordpress format. So if we have many specific post/popular post with high traffic from search engine, they will be redirected to the main domain in the new domain. Is that correct? please tell me if I wrong.

      Cheers
      Cityslicker Mom

    • David Bradley // Dec 4, 2007 at 2:00 pm

      Yes, I kind of glossed over that. There is a way to make it work for each individual post using .htaccess redirects on your host page. I did it for category folders but the previous version of this blog was not particular big and despite being reviewed by Guardian Unlimited and New Scientist in the past had few backlinks until more recently.

    • dunn // Dec 8, 2007 at 5:28 pm

      Hi David.
      How about the pictures in the post? When we import post from blogger to wordpress, do the pictures will upload together with the post to wordpress? Or we have to move it manually one by one?
      Cheers.. dunn,

    • David Bradley // Dec 9, 2007 at 1:02 pm

      Good point Dunn, yes, you’re going to have to ftp your photos

      d

    • dunn // Dec 14, 2007 at 6:23 am

      hi david, it’s me again. i still have one more question.
      since my site have lots of pictures, and i think it’s impossible for me to ftp all the pics (one by one) by one day, what would it show during the process? can i just lead the visitor to my site host by blogger (but using own domain already) until i finish ftp all the pics? (btw i’ve been using own domain but still hosted by blogger for the past year). any suggestion for me? thank’s in advance, david.

    • David Bradley // Dec 14, 2007 at 6:41 am

      Dunn, you could point the URLs for the images on the new hosted site to the old blogger domain URLs. But, check that this doesn’t break T&Cs first and that hotlinking is allowed.

      db

    • analogstuff // Feb 4, 2008 at 7:41 am

      I have recently moved my blog from http://analogstuff.blogspot.com to http://analogstuff.net.

      I have hosted my new URL at Blogspot and got the domain at Yahoo. I feel yahoo and google did a great job. I just could finish the job in 30 min. Now all the links in the blog have been changed to the new URL. I dont know about loosing page rank etc.. But one thing i can say that i lost considerable traffic after i shifted from blogspot URL to custom URL.

      analogstuff’s last blog post..Plastic Surgery

    • David Bradley // Feb 4, 2008 at 8:10 am

      analogstuff, you did redirect your blogspot blog to your new custom domain didn’t you? I cannot see why you would have lost traffic unless you’d failed to do that.

      db

    • Manuel // Feb 10, 2008 at 5:42 am

      I changed my blogspot with my own domain,
      from http://bajaenergy.blospot.com to http://blog.bajaenergy.com , but I LOST my PR4. So, I undertand (after read you), google/blogger going to put me my old PR4 in my new own domain. Some weeks or months? not years … I hope

      Manuel’s last blog post..FRANCE: Francois Fillon to visit Japan for nuclear talks

    • David Bradley // Feb 11, 2008 at 3:21 pm

      There are no guarantees, it could be a couple of months, it may never happen. Thing you should be proud of is that you’re now on your own domain!

      db

    • Dunn // Mar 23, 2008 at 3:01 pm

      Hi David! I just transfered my site from Blogger to self hosted. Already installed WordPress, widgets, etc. The homepage already views correctly, with the new WP theme. But when I clicked individual post, it viewed using the blogger theme. Already asked help from the hosting transfers team, and seemed like they don’t know how to fix this either. Is anyone have ever face this problem before? Or does anyone know how to fix this? Please help.

    • David Bradley // Mar 23, 2008 at 8:19 pm

      Dunn, sounds like a caching issue. Do a Ctrl-F5 of a Ctrl-Shift-R. Failing that, clear your browser cache via options.

      Where are the links in posts, archives and from homepage actually pointing? Did you update your .htaccess to redirect properly?

      db

    • Dunn // Mar 24, 2008 at 5:41 pm

      I had done what you asked, but it didn’t help. And I dont understand about .htaccess. I had sent email to you to explain my situation, I hope you don’t mind.

      Dunn’s last blog post..School in a Cave

    • David Bradley // Mar 24, 2008 at 7:30 pm

      Dunn – do a quick google on “.htaccess”, you’ll find out all kinds of useful stuff.

      db

    • iKKi // Apr 20, 2008 at 4:09 am

      Great post but I’m still having trouble moving my blog to my domain. :( Can anyone help me? I just bought my domain name from Yahoo.

      I followed the instructions here: http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=58317.
      I got an e-mail from Yahoo saying my domain is active and it has been 2 days now but when I type my domain it showed page under construction. :( What should I do? I really appreciate your help.

    • Mahesh // Apr 20, 2008 at 10:52 am

      hey i tried this for my blog and it worked perfectly. thank you. now i want to know whether the opposite will work. I have a custom domain which has a wordpress engine. i haven’t put any content on it so far. can i transfer it to the blogger engine?? if it’s possible can you please tell me how to do it. Thank you

    • Josh // Apr 28, 2008 at 12:04 am

      Hi

      I was wondering whether it is possible to migrate directly from blogspot to country specific domain (i.e .co.uk)?
      If not do you have any suggestions?
      Thanks

    • David Bradley // Apr 28, 2008 at 8:42 am

      Josh, I don’t think it makes any difference to Blogspot’s redirect system where you migrated to. Should work just the same.

      db

    • Ari // May 28, 2008 at 5:18 pm

      David, I applaud you for answering everyone’s questions so maybe you can help with mine: I have two Blogger-hosted blogs, each with its own custom domain at http://www.x.com and http://www.y.com. I’d like to import/export/combine all posts and comments from both to blog.z.com which is a domain I externally host. Is this possible whether through Blogger, WordPress, Drupal, or some other system?

    • David Bradley // Jun 2, 2008 at 10:56 am

      You could import x and y into z if z were a WordPress blog, certainly. Just do the necessary on blog x, go to z’s dashboard and import, then do the same with y.

      Apols for the delayed response, I took a vacation last week. Photos to appear soon on my flickr account…

      db

    • Jill // Jul 7, 2008 at 1:15 am

      Hi David,
      You wrote:
      “Third. Log back into your Blogger account and go to the blog “Settings” tab and from their “Publishing”. Click “switch to Custom Domain” and enter the URL for your imported WordPress blog and save.

      Fourth. Enter your old blogspot address in your browser, it should instananeously redirect to the new WordPress version of your blog.”

      I’ve done the third step, however the fourth step isn’t working in Internet Explorer. In Firefox it works. And it’s only the blogger domain to new domain that doesn’t work. All the individual articles will properly redirect (with the correct .htaccess file resident on the new domain).

      Have you seen this issue before? It’s only visible in Internet Explorer. In Firefox you get a page that tells you the blog has been redirected and you have to click to go to the new blog.

      Here’s the link to the issue here:
      http://groups.google.com/group/blogger-help-publishing/t/4e907fdd44c13721

    • David Bradley // Jul 7, 2008 at 7:28 am

      Hi Jill

      Yes, I’d noticed that Blogger changed the format for their redirects. However, if you use the URL redirect server response check at SEO tools, enter the original blogger URL and hit return/enter you will see that it gives a 301 (moved permanently) redirect message to the new location,which is the only thing that matters in terms of rank being passed on to the new site.

    • Jill // Jul 7, 2008 at 6:22 pm

      Hi David,
      Thanks VERY much for this info. I checked a blog I had migrated a while ago (www.vibrancenutrition.blogspot.com) using that tool, and indeed it’s correctly showing 301 Moved Permanently. So this means the rank is being passed, which is good, but it also means that any readers who use Internet Explorer and read the blog via accessing the blog’s home page will not be able to find the new blog. But this might be a trade off that has to be made I suppose.
      Would you agree with this?

    • David Bradley // Jul 8, 2008 at 8:16 am

      Jill, eventually, that shouldn’t matter, should it? Backlinks should be redirecting automatically, so it’s only visitors who by chance enter the original URL in IE (why would they?) that will have a problem. Blogspot obviously adds an additional header to the page before the 301 gets sent that IE doesn’t recognize, however, so thanks for pointing that out.

    • Orphen // Aug 5, 2008 at 5:21 am

      Hi David

      I have the old Blogger Blogspot system ( not beta )

      I got a domain for my blog but when try to add it in
      Settings = Publishing = Custom Domain
      it give me this (Ex: blog.example.com)
      I can’t add the www and this message come up “Another blog is already hosted at this address”
      what should I do ?

      and if I move to the www I will lose my posts

      Thanks

    • David Bradley // Aug 5, 2008 at 7:53 am

      Orphen, very odd. Are you on shared hosting? Do you already have files on http://www.example.com? What is the blogspot address and where is example.com I could take a look.

    • Oprhen // Aug 5, 2008 at 9:03 pm

      Hi
      thanks for your reply

      my blog is http://mixedup-world.blogspot.com

      I have bought my Domain from Blogger to get the http://www.mixedup-world.com

      so I try to add it in Settings = Publishing but nothing and this example near the box (Ex: blog.example.com) so I have to add blog like this http://blog.mixedup-world.com

      I don’t know how to move my blog to the www

    • David Bradley // Aug 6, 2008 at 8:28 am

      Oprhen, you’re comment was *not* deleted, there was no need to repost it several times. I was simply sleeping when you posted and have only just now got to moderate it. I’m not sure why you were forced to use the blog. prefix on your domain. But, why did you feel it necessary to buy a domain from Blogger in the first place, couldn’t you have got a better deal elsewhere?

    • Orphen // Aug 6, 2008 at 8:39 am

      Oops Sorry

      but it was show up and then when come to check if you reply I saw that it was removed so I thought I would post it again
      So sorry

      well I’m new at this I didn’t know where could I buy one and was looking for the easiest way to start
      I have post my problem here too but without any help

      http://groups.google.com/group/hosted-settingup/browse_thread/thread/6d243a19770b6368#

      so there no solution for that ?

      Thanks

    • David Bradley // Aug 6, 2008 at 8:57 am

      Orphen or is it Orphen like you had first? I’m not sure how the post could’ve showed up as moderated. It would have appeared in your cache prior to approval but no one else would’ve been able to see it until I up-moderated it just now. Okay. Fair comment on the hosting. But, I’m sure there’s a FAQ that will explain how to use www. not blog. on the Blogger site.

    • Orphen // Aug 6, 2008 at 9:15 am

      if you didn’t delete your cookies & temp files it will show

      if there was an explanation why thay didn’t say it in groups.google.com
      I have searched a lot
      and really give up

      thank you anyway for taking the time to reply me

    • David Bradley // Aug 6, 2008 at 9:54 am

      Well, like I say, I was asleep when you posted, so it wasn’t me, but I just logged out and posted a test post and nothing showed up, although the post is in the mod queue, so I’m not sure how you saw anything!

    • Greg // Oct 1, 2008 at 10:02 pm

      Great walkthrough, but I’m a little confused on Blogger’s “You’re about to be redirected…” page. You said that that’s fine because the SEO Logic reports the new location, but this is what I see:

      Server Response : oldblogspotsite.blogspot.com
      HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
      Date: Wed, 01 Oct 2008 21:00:18 GMT
      Expires: Wed, 01 Oct 2008 21:00:18 GMT

      It doesn’t say anything about the new site, just checking. Thanks!

    • David Bradley // Oct 1, 2008 at 11:01 pm

      Greg – it’s possible things have changed since I wrote this post back in January 2007. However, if you’re blog is redirecting with a 301 to the new site then things are working fine.

    • C. J. Newton // Oct 3, 2008 at 3:59 pm

      Greg – the script at SEO Logic (http://www.seologic.com/webmaster-tools/url-redirect.php) is a simple checker to determine whether the user agent sees a status 200 OK, a status 302 moved temporarily, or a status 301 moved permanently response from the server. As long as the tool shows a 301 redirect, you have correctly redirected from the old location to the new one. For those of you who use our tools, keep an eye out. We are building several more tools right now and upgrading the tools we have.

    • Glenn Dallaire // Oct 5, 2008 at 3:21 am

      I moved from blogspot to a custom domain, purchasing the domain name for $10.00 right thru Blogspot itself (uses google checkout) while at the same time keeping blogspot as the host. The move and redirecting is done automatically thru the blogspot setup menus. Blogspots help section describs the process quite well.
      Best wishes,
      Glenn

    • colorite // Oct 21, 2008 at 6:34 pm

      Well explained about blogger custom domain . If we move from “..blogspot.com” to custom domain , will it affect the post page ranks of the original blog??

    • David Bradley // Oct 21, 2008 at 8:36 pm

      You have to use a bunch of rewrites to do redirects to make sure the old post pages forward to the correct page on your new blog, but yes, it seems to carry forward if you get it right.

    • Donna // Dec 2, 2008 at 1:41 pm

      I am so glad David found me on blogspot and advised me to the advantages of using a private domain and wordpress. It was much easier than I had expected, and I empowered by the possibilities of controlling my own site. Thanks, David!!

    • sree // Dec 18, 2008 at 5:29 am

      Hi i have recently changed my blogspot sub domain to .com, the problem for me is,the sitemap in googlewebmaster showing error.i put greetmedaddy.com/atom.xml and greetmedaddy.com/rss.xml but its showing error and saying its not the right format of site map. please tell me how can i put the right sitemap.My page rank of the site droped down aswell.

      thank you

    • David Bradley // Dec 18, 2008 at 7:30 am

      sree, regenerate your site map ensuring you’re referring to the new domain in all appropriate slots.

    • ArahMan7 // Dec 30, 2008 at 2:47 am

      Hola David,

      Everything okay when I changed my Blog*Spot to a custom domain name, My
      Journey To Recovery       and it published ok with or without the www.

      But I’m facing problems with my blog’s template.

      1. Now all headers on both sidebars are missing.

      2. Background colour for the box on top of sidebars is missing. It’s suppose to be blue, but now it’s white in colour!

      3. There are blank spaces on certain part and both RSS links for comment and entries are missing, but both links are available on ‘Edit Layout’ mode.

      Is it the norm when publishing Blog*Spot to a custom domain name, your template will be in a mess like mine?

      Do I have to change using Blog*Spot default template to fix the problem?

      That’s all for now, David. Hope to hear from you soon.

      A belated blessed Christmas to you and you loved ones. And Happy new year too.

      Greetings and lots of love from Malaysia.

      p/s Oh yeah, I’m hosting my blog with Blogger/Google.

    • MarieDenee // Apr 15, 2009 at 4:33 am

      Hi! Great information you have here…
      Got a few questions:
      I have a blogspot changed to a custom domain through google now with a .com and I want to change to wordpress. I changed over to .com almost two months ago and I have had my blog since the end of December, and my blog is starting to pickup steam…
      1. How do I change over when I already have a cusom domain?
      2. I do not understand the WordPress download… feeling like a dummy. Could you help me?
      3. can you do a step by step change over from blogger to WordPress…

    • Raj Sinha // Mar 3, 2010 at 6:26 pm

      Hi pls tell me how much it will take to redirect my custom domain using blogger pls let me after 24 its not working and google search engine shows a msg in search engine- Blogger: Redirecting

    • David Bradley // Mar 3, 2010 at 7:14 pm

      @Raj As far as I know Google stopped doing straight 301 redirects from Blogger to domains a couple of years ago.

    • Shannon (WAHM) // Apr 8, 2010 at 5:03 am

      Thanks for the info. I was really worried about page ranking . I have a blogger blog and I just bought a custom domain.

    • David Bradley // Apr 8, 2010 at 10:11 am

      This is an old post and no longer applies as Google no longer allows 301 redirects for its blogger blogspot blogs to custom domains. You will have to start from scratch in terms of PR.

    • Shannon (WAHM) // Apr 8, 2010 at 2:32 pm

      Hi Bradley,

      So this means that none of my original posts will be avaiable online. What should I do, resubmit my blog to all search engines again?

      Any information you provide will be helpful!

      Best Regards,

      Shannon

    • David Bradley // Apr 8, 2010 at 4:00 pm

      @Shannon Worse than that, if you simply duplicate your site, Google will see it as duplicate content and may not even rank it at all. I’d recommend commissioning someone to walk you through the options before you make a start…

    • Tweety // Apr 12, 2010 at 11:21 pm

      hi,
      Blogger supports 301 redirects. You need to make sure your domain works without www too. To do this one needs to follow these steps:
      http://amiatypist.blogspot.com/2010/04/domain-not-working-without-www.html


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