Retaining Page Rank, And Traffic, During the FTP Migration

As May 1 fast approaches, there are still a few FTP bloggers waiting to make the plunge, who ask

What happens to my page rank, when I migrate?

and

How do I retain my traffic, if I move to a new URL?

and these are not very simple questions to answer.

The best result will be achieved by migrating to the same URL structure, under the custom domain.

• If you can migrate from your external, FTP published server, to an absolutely identical URL - for all posts - in a Google custom domain, then you can retain page rank, and traffic.
• If your URL changes, even slightly, then your page rank starts over at 0, because the content has to be re indexed under the new URL. Now, you ask whether the traffic can be automatically redirected, from the old URL to the new URL.
  • If the URL changes, but the traffic can be redirected properly, then you can retain your traffic, and your page rank - though starting at 0 - will build up faster than it did when the blog was started. You'll see moderate total drop of search engine originated traffic.
  • If the URL changes, and the traffic cannot be redirected, then your page rank, and traffic, will start out very slowly. You'll have established readers, so you won't start as low as the blog was when new, but it will be pretty low.
    • Each reader will follow a series of links, from a bookmark (on their computer), to the actual post (under a new URL).
    • The search engines may, or may not, be able to find each post under the new URL.
  You'll see significant total drop of search engine originated traffic.

Remember that you'll have 3 options, if you use the Blogger FTP Migration Tool.

• To Blog*Spot.
• To a Google custom domain URL, different from the current domain.
• To a Google custom domain URL, the same domain host as the current domain.

One major question here is whether the blog contains pictures that are hosted by the domain. If pictures are involved, then you will have to retain the domain, and host the pictures, until you can re host the pictures elsewhere, and update all blog posts to point to the new picture URLs. If you migrate to the same domain host, you'll have to setup a missing files host.

A migration to BlogSpot is the simplest process overall, but will have the worst effect on both page rank and traffic. If you simply cut your losses, and re publish to a BlogSpot URL - and if you have no pictures hosted on the external server - you can drop the external server completely, and concentrate on rebuilding page rank and traffic from 0, using a new BlogSpot URL. If you have pictures hosted on the external server, you will need to retain the current server to host the domain, and the pictures. Your new blog will use pictures hosted on the external server, under the current URLs. The domain will continue to be served, the blog itself will simply have a new URL.

A migration to a custom domain, using a new domain host, will be more complex than migrating to BlogSpot, but it will produce the same results upon page rank and traffic. If you have pictures hosted on the external server, you will still have to retain the current server to host the domain, and the pictures. Your new blog, in its new custom domain published URL, will start off with a page rank of 0, again as the content has to be re indexed. If you can retain the traffic, and current readership, page rank will pick up again. For a custom domain migration using a new domain host, you will want the new domain host defined in DNS before the migration starts. This is an essential task, which you must perform. If the domain host DNS is not properly setup, any reference to the blog, under its new hosting, will produce problems. Custom domain hosting problems, caused by bogus DNS settings, are well known.

A migration to a custom domain, using the same domain host, and using the exact same blog URL structure, will be more complex than either of the two above options. It will have the best results upon page rank and traffic - if you can do it. With the content hosted in the custom domain - but under the exact same URL, the content will not be re indexed by the search engines as new content. The search engines will simply continue indexing it, as before, with no change.

The migration to a same domain host will involve some work by you, since the migration tool won't do everything for you. It will involve 4 steps.

1. You start out with the domain host DNS pointing to the external server.
2. You execute the first half of the migration.
3. You update the domain host DNS to point to the Google server. This is an essential task, which you must perform. If the domain host DNS is not properly setup, any reference to the blog, under its new hosting, will produce problems. Custom domain hosting problems, caused by bogus DNS settings, are well known.
4. You execute the second half of the migration.

When the migration to the same host, with identical URL, is complete, you'll have the same blog, hosted on a Google custom domain, and at the same URL. If the blog, currently published to the distant server, contains photos, or posts linked internally, you can retain the currently published contents on the distant server, and use a Missing Files Host.

Finally, with the blog re hosted, you can explore the possibility of upgrading the template to Layout, or even to a Designer Template.

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FTP Publishing - The Full Story

I've been writing about Custom Domain Publishing, and about FTP Publishing, and the relative advantages and differences, for several years now.

In August 2007, I went out on a limb (for me, anyway) and I suggested that

From an economic and support viewpoint, it makes more sense for Blogger to concentrate its attention on Custom Domain publishing, where they control everything but the domain directory process, and can eliminate the uncertainty of supporting communications with hundreds of third party servers, complicated by geographical and network distance issues.

Blogger, in FTP vs. Custom Domains, last year, provided their view of why custom domain publishing has more future.

As I've dug in over the last few weeks on issues relating to FTP, as often as not the problems were not Blogger-related but were a byproduct of a webhost implementing stricter security on FTP logins (only whitelisting certain IP addresses, for instance, or throttling access for certain users). These are notoriously hard to isolate, particularly when they involve coordinating support with a third party. No one - including us! - enjoys the terrible back and forth of "it's the webhost's issue" "no, it's Blogger's issue" "no, we're pretty sure it's the webhost's issue" when all you want is to be able to post to your blog.

I've written numerous articles about various problems with FTP Publishing - some problems directly attributed to changes by remote server support staff, others suspected to be related to changes - but not proven.

Many problems have been fixed by Blogger Support. So I sort of had an idea that problems existed, but what I was seeing - and suspecting - was merely the tip of the iceberg.

In Deprecating FTP, we see statistics

FTP remains a significant drain on our ability to improve Blogger: only .5% of active blogs are published via FTP — yet the percentage of our engineering resources devoted to supporting FTP vastly exceeds that.

In The Technical Side of FTP, we see even stronger details.

Google runs many datacenters, and Blogger runs in several of them. Each datacenter has a different Internet address (a.k.a. "IP address") when it connects to your FTP server, so if your hosting service requires an IP whitelist, you would have to list all of the IP addresses associated with each of our active datacenters. ... This leads to a significant amount of user frustration, and regularly results in blogs failing to publish successfully. Diagnosing these issues has taken up a large part of our engineering and support team's time.

and

In a great deal of cases, FTP publishing works but is extremely slow due to shared hosting plans having slow or limited network or disk per user. We have seen cases of full FTP republishes taking over a month, entirely due to the FTP server being slow.

and even a concluding

We spent a significant amount of engineering time improving FTP support in the last two years, not including support and troubleshooting user issues. Even after this effort, approximately 10% of all FTP publishes fail.

So you see, folks, when you saw the well known error

Publishing your blog is taking longer than expected ...

you weren't alone. Blogger engineers were seeing it, too - from a different, and equally, frustrating viewpoint.

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FTP Publishing - The Migration Is In Progress

If you're currently publishing a blog externally, using FTP, you've probably seen the handwriting on the wall - or maybe, on your dashboard.

FTP publishing will no longer be available after May 1, 2010
You currently have blogs that are published using FTP. You must migrate your blogs to a new custom domain URL or a blogspot URL. To learn more, see our dedicated blog and help documentation.

Start migration now

So, get started. Read the Blogger FTP Info. If you have any problems before, during, or after the migration, add them to the FTP Migration Issues Tracker database, so your problems can be properly diagnosed and resolved.

Remember, as I've said before, if you have a problem, and you don't report the problem, then you become part of the problem. So, report the problem, if you have a problem.

When you migrate, you have several possibilities for the new URL which will be progressively more complex, yet be offset by a varying effect upon page rank, search engine reputation, and traffic.

• BlogSpot. The simplest of all.
• Custom Domain - New virtual host. Here, you have to create new virtual Host DNS records, which you can do before you start the migration. The migration will not complete successfully, without DNS for the new virtual host properly setup.
• Custom Domain - Same virtual host. This one is tricky. Here, you have to update the existing Virtual Host DNS records, but you cannot do this until the migration from the current host is complete. As with the latter choice though, the migration will not complete successfully, without DNS for the new virtual host properly setup. You will need to be prepared to change the Virtual Host DNS records at the precisely correct time in the migration - after the migration from the existing host is complete, but before the migration to the Custom Domain starts.

In all 3 of the above choices, the migration process will create a redirection from the current URL to the new URL, as you choose. See Migration tool overview, for more information about the migration process in general.

If your blog has any photos hosted on the external server, that content will continue to be hosted there - to save you having to change blog code which references the photos (or any similarly hosted content). Using the Missing Files host in a custom domain will be essential to a successful migration. See Advanced setup: moving from www to www, for instructions on using the Missing Files host.

If you elect to go with the 3rd choice above, see Advanced setup: moving from www to www for additional details which you need to consider.

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Custom Domain Publishing Vs FTP Publishing - Understand The Difference

This week's announcement about the (lack of) future for FTP Publishing has started a shock wave of FUD and panic. Some folks in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? may be panicking unnecessarily.

Am I in trouble? Do I need to switch back to BlogSpot - and if I do, can I keep my dot com name - mydomain.com?

In this case, we look at other clues in the question, and check out the domain.

mydomain.com.  3600 IN A 216.239.32.21
mydomain.com.  3600 IN A 216.239.34.21
mydomain.com.  3600 IN A 216.239.36.21
mydomain.com.  3600 IN A 216.239.38.21
www.mydomain.com. 3600 IN CNAME ghs.google.com.

That's a blog published to a custom domain, and that blogger has no need to worry. Custom domain publishing has offered an alternative to FTP publishing for a while - now, Blogger is exercising that alternative.

So, should you worry?

Look at the URL behind the "View Blog" link on the dashboard, and at the Settings - Publishing display.

My blog "Nitecruzr New Template Laboratory" is published to "nitecruzrtestnew.blogspot.com".

You're publishing on blogspot.com

My blog "The Real Blogger Status" is published to "blogging.nitecruzr.net".

You're publishing on a custom domain

My blog "Chuck's FTP Test" is published to "nitecruzr.com".

You're publishing via FTP

Only the latter blog - "Chuck's FTP Test" - needs to be migrated. The others are fine. Only worry about your blog, if you see

You're publishing via FTP

.

Does your blog

• Use a BlogSpot URL, exclusively?
• Have a layouts template?
• Have a shiny gadget, like a BlogList, Following, maybe a Google Translator?

If any of the above are true, then most likely, you do not use FTP Publishing. Relax, then get back to work.

Blogger FTP Info: Who's affected? provides a simpler answer to the above question.

• If your blog URL ends in "blogspot.com", you are not affected
• If you don't see "You're publishing via FTP" (or "You're publishing via S/FTP") when you go to "Settings | Publishing", you are not affected

If your blog is published by FTP to an external server, you have Until May 1 to plan and execute the migration - back to BlogSpot, then maybe to a custom domain.

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FTP Publishing - January 2010 #2

All good things come to and end, and FTP Publishing is subject to this rule. Back in June 2008, I suggested that the option to publish Blogger blogs to non Google servers would not be available forever.

FTP publishing has a limited life span. From an economic and support viewpoint, it makes more sense for Blogger to concentrate its attention on Custom Domain publishing.

The future, for Blogger publishing, has arrived. From Blogger Buzz: Important Note to FTP Users we see:

In evaluating the investment needed to continue supporting FTP, we have decided that we could not justify diverting further engineering resources away from building new features for all users.

For that reason, we are announcing today that we will no longer support FTP publishing in Blogger after March 26, 2010.

Blogger will try to ease the pain, somewhat.

• A migration tool will be available February 22, to automate the migration process.
  
• A dedicated blog will discuss what's happening.
  
• Blogger team members will make themselves available.

So, it's time for you to prepare to move forward, to alternatives that let you use new and shiny layouts Blogger.

Welcome to the future.

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FTP Publishing - Moving Ahead

Some time ago, in my comprehensive comparison of Custom Domain vs FTP Publishing, I suggested that

FTP publishing has a limited life span. From an economic and support viewpoint, it makes more sense for Blogger to concentrate its attention on Custom Domain publishing.

This week, we have a new, annoying problem with FTP publishing, which, regardless of what may or may not be stated by Blogger, does not seem to be solved. And we have a possible reliability improvement in custom domain publishing, with the dreaded "404 Not Found" problem, recently, becoming less frequently reported.

It's possible that my prior suspicion may become reality sometime in the near future. Some of you, currently publishing your blogs using FTP Publishing, may do well to consider changing to Custom Domain Publishing. And in doing so, you should consider several key issues.

• If you initially published your blog to the FTP server prior to November 2007, it's possible that the original BlogSpot URL isn't associated with the external URL. If the BlogSpot URL is associated with the blog, it's probably through some workarounds that you may have put into place, on your own. With Custom Domain publishing, the BlogSpot URL used to setup the blog is automatically redirected to the Custom Domain URL. You'll need to publish the blog to BlogSpot, to ensure a BlogSpot URL is in place first.
• If you're hosting a domain on an external server, you're probably hosting photos there too. You may want to plan to migrate the photos, and host them on Google servers, unless you want to keep maintaining the FTP server with the existing photos. Unfortunately, migrating the photos will involve manual effort.
• If you're hosting a domain on an external server, you will need to ensure that the registrar for the domain provides DNS servers that support CNAME referral. If not, you'll want to find another registrar, or buy another domain.
• If you're hosting a web site on an external server, when you move to hosting the web site (blog) on a custom domain, the structure of the blog, and some URLs, may change. If the blog is part of a web site, you'll want to update the web site, to reflect the change.
• With an FTP published blog, you have folder and file control. You may have files, installed in the root of the blog, that enable automated processes, such as search engine spiders, to index the blog. You'll have to use meta tag records for similar functions, when your blog is published back to Blogger.
• When the blog is published back to Blogger, the URLs of some files will likely change, to include publishing month, and title hash, uniformly. If you have any external or internal references to individual posts (and most blogs do), be aware of this change. Plan to use a missing files host, to reduce the impact of this issue.

With all of that said, let's plan the actual move.

1. Carefully consider the relative advantages and disadvantages of FTP and Custom Domain publishing.
2. Go through the issues list above, and consider each as it applies to your blog.
3. If the move from FTP to custom domain involves a change in URL, let your readers know in advance.
4. Publish the blog back to a BlogSpot URL.
5. Update the DNS records to reflect the custom domain setup.
6. Publish the blog to the custom domain.

We can actually describe steps 5 and 6 in combination, as setup a custom domain. You'll have 2 alternatives, here.

• If you can use the existing domain, just update or add a "CNAME" referral for the blog, redirecting it to "ghs.google.com". Here, you'll use the "Advanced Settings" wizard.
• If you need a new domain for the blog, use "Buy A Domain", and you're done.

Either way, this task has been tried and tested by hundreds of bloggers before you, if you start from a BlogSpot published blog.

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