Attention Blog Owners - Nobody Knows Your Blog

One confusion, which we see in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken regularly, concerns blog owners and their understanding about search engine functionality.

I can't find my blog!

This is frequently more completely expressed as

I can't find my blog, listed in a Search Engine Results Page, when I search by URL (blog title, some other obscure detail ...)!

Equally as mystifying are people who report

I typed in the name of some obscure porn concept, and found my blog listed. Why is my blog listed with porn?

This problem is partially caused by some browser producers, who confuse us by combining the browser address and search windows. There are other reasons for the confusion, too.

When you have a blog with an established audience, and you are able to examine demographic detail found in various visitor logs and meters, you'll observe activity from various sources.

• Search engines and similar robotic indexing services.
• People, using newsfeed subscriptions, and various newsfeed clients.
• People, pasting or typing the URL into the browser address window.
• People, clicking on links in bloglists (on other peoples blogs), and bookmarks (in their personal browsers).

People using search engines find your blog from searching for content.

When the visitor log, that you are examining, provides you with detail about your search engine traffic sources, you'll notice that most people using search engines find your blog when using search terms that reference blog content. This is because people using search engines do not know about your blog, and do not know (or care about) the blog name, title, or URL.

People who know how to use their browser most effectively, and already know about your blog, will use one of the latter 3 services to find your blog.

People who use search engines do not know about your blog - they want content.

The people who use search engines, for the most part, will be people who do not know your blog, or are looking for material other than - or in addition to - your blog. None of these people will use the blog title or URL, in their search activity.

If you are going to get new Followers, readers, subscribers, and viewers in general, you have to work hard, get the blog indexed, and get it properly publicised. And, it needs to appear in a good position, in a popular search engine results page, for some amount of time.

Use Search Console (pka Webmaster Tools) to measure search indexing results.

If you're using a blog URL search to measure search engine indexing of your blog, use the diagnostics in Google Webmaster Tools, for a more efficient and objective analysis. If you're using a blog URL search to measure visitor perception of your blog, wise up and get to work on your blog.