What is Google Friend Connect

This article describes Google Friend Connect, and how it can be used at the moment.

Google Friend Connect (GFC) was one of Google's earlier social-networking attempts, introduced in 2008.

Originally (you can still see the full description here), GFC promised a range of social features that website-owners, including bloggers, could include on their sites. including:

How to make AdSense ads in your site load faster

This article is about a new, faster, type of AdSense code which is available, and how you can add it to your blog.

AdSense have announced that they are now providing a new, faster, type of code for their ads.

This code is "asynchronous", which means that other content on the page will still keep on loading, even if the advertisement is delayed.

This a good thing, because it lets your blog's visitors see your posts more quickly.  Also, if SEO matters for your blog, then having it load as quickly as possible is important, because Google likes pages that load quickly.

Where is the Blogger help forum now?

This quick-tip is about how to find the current version of Blogger's support forum.

27 July update:   I noticed yesterday that Google have changed the process back, and that Blogger's help link now leads directly to the summary page which includes a Community button.   I guess this means they listened - if not to me, then at least to everyone else who complained.

How to use Picasa-web-albums, without being re-directed to Google+ Photos

This article is about how to you can start Picasa-web-albums in way that stops you being immediately re-directed to Google+ Photos.

What happens when you start Picasa-web-albums?

If you have a Google+ account, either because you only signed up for Google recently, or you had a Blogger account first and then linked your blog to Google+, then you will know that if you go to Picasa-web-albums), you are immediately re-directed to Google+ photos.

How to replace a file in Google Drive with a new version

This article is about how to update a file that you have loaded to Google drive. It only applies to files that have not been converted to Google Docs format - for example, PDF, Word, Excel etc files.

New versions vs new files in Google Docs

On a couple of my blogs, I provide files that people can download and use themselves.

When you share a file in this way, there are three main issues to consider:

• Where to put the file
• How people will find it
• What format to use.

Today, Google Drive is the most obvious file hosting option for people using Blogger. (A file host is somewhere that you can put files which Blogger cannot upload - see File Hosting options for Blogger for more details and other alternatives.)

Webmaster tools Structured Data Testing Tool - helping bloggers who care about SEO

This quick-tip introduces the Google Webmaster Tools structured data testing tool, which gives you a view of how your site looks to the search-engines.

Today I discovered that Google Webmaster Tools offers tools for testing the structured data on your website.

Removing the label values from the blog-post header or footer

This article explains how to stop label values from showing in the header or footer lines for each post in a blog that is made with Google's Blogger.

If you have used the Labels / Page-gadget approach to putting your blogposts into separate pages, then each of your posts will have one or more Labels attached to them.

Get your blog-posts into Google's in-depth search results

This Quick Tip is about the new in-depth search results feature that Google has recently introduced, and how you set up your blog-posts so they have a chance of being considered as in-depth.

In-depth search results

Google recently announced a new category that may sometimes be shown in a search results page, ie the page of information that is shown to a person after they have run a search in Google.

These suggested "in-depth" results are meant to help people to "find relevant in-depth articles in the main Google Search results"

This feature will be initially only be used on search results from on google.com in English, but is likely to extend to other google searches (eg google.co.uk, google.in, etc) and other languages over time.

Google+ communities - another way to grow your blog's influence

This Quick Tip is about Google+ Communities, and the ways you could use them to promote  your blog.



Google+ has launched Communities - their equivalent of Facebook's Groups.

If you  want to be a market-leader in your field then you might want to create:

• A page for your blog
  (eg like I have with Blogger Hints-and-Tips' G_ Page), and

• A community about some aspect of your niche. (eg How to Use Blogger). 

Or,  if your blog is more like a newsletter for a club or group, you may want to create a community for your members instead, with less focus on the niche and more on the people.

How to show pictures from Google Plus Photos in any website

This article shows how you can get a slideshow of all the photos from an album in your own Google Photos, which can be placed into a website or blog.

Sharing a photo album from Google+ Photos

Google's help-pages note that you can share a Google Photos album using a link - and is a good option for showing your photos to people who are outside of Google+.

How to make a blog into a real website

This article explains how you can use Blogger to make a site that looks just like any other website and why you might, sometimes, want to do this.

Blogs vs Websites

Some people are very happy to use Blogger to make a blog, that is, website that looks like a diary or journal that they write in regularly.

Giving another Google account control over your blog

This article is about changing the ownership of your Blogger blog.   As well as looking at how to make the changes inside Blogger, it also looks at some other issues you may need to think about (eg comment moderation, items outside Blogger, advertising).

Blogs and Google Accounts

Each blog is "owned" by at least one Google account.   This administrator account can do anything in the blog:  write posts, set up new authors, change the template, add new formatting rules, delete posts - or the entire blog, moderate comments, etc etc etc.

Taking action when someone has copied your blog without permission

This article is about the steps you can take when someone has made an unauthorized copy of something that is published on your blog.

Finding out that your blog has been copied

Previously, I've described how copyright applies to blogs in very general terms, and the steps you can take to apply copyright protection to your blog.