Comments "Lost", With Google+ Comments Selection

Besides the confusion about being in the right Circles, some Google+ comments can be overlooked, because of the comment view selector.

We see odd problem reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue.

When a friend mentioned she'd commented, I found that odd - because I couldn't find the comment anymore. It had shown up previously - but it was now gone.

The view selector is not so obvious, either. It's similar to the "Compose" / "HTML" buttons, in Post Editor.

Besides the view selector, we see another possibility for third party cookies, unwisely filtered, to cause confusion.

Displaying comments for a blog, with Google+ comments involved, requires determining the identity of the individual viewer. Viewer identity - much more specific than "blog owner" / "blog guest" - is required, to determine visibility of specific comments, published against a given blog.

Here's an example, using a post from my recipes blog.

12 comments - from Circles + Public.

Circles + Public, selected.

6 comments - from my Circles.

Circles only, selected.



Can you see the difference? Other viewers of the blog will see a completely different set of comments.

Here's a different example, from a forum topic.

The blog owner, signed in, sees a count of 27 comments.

The blog owner, not signed in, sees a count of 42 comments.



There's actually 3 possible different displays - each showing a different comment count, and a different list of comments.

1. Not signed in.
2. Signed in, looking at "Public" + "Circles".
3. Signed in, looking at "Circles" only.

One might expect #1 and #2 to be the same. In some cases, it appears that #1 displays a total comments count - though #2 and #3 display a count specific to the blog owner or reader. And I would not expect that one will actually see a precisely equal number of individual comments, displayed.

And if blog owner / reader access is affected by a third party cookie filter, both the comment count - and the list of comments displayed - will be smaller than what really should be displayed.

We now have a Rollup Discussion, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue, where we are requesting details from anybody experiencing mysterious loss of comments, If you are losing comments, please provide your details.

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Owners of #Blogger blogs that use Google+ Comments don't realise how much more important their personal identity is, when looking for comments, that should be displayed with the individual posts. Personal identity is further relevant, with the "Circles" / "Public" comment selector, a feature of Google+ Comments.

And determining personal identity is affected, when cookie filtering becomes involved.

Custom Domain Migration, And Google+ Comments

With both custom domain publishing, and Google+ hosted comments, becoming more popular, it is inevitable that the two subjects would interact.

One key difference between Blogger hosted comments, and Google+ hosted comments, is how they associate with the host blog. Blogger hosted comments link to the blog - but Google+ hosted comments (aka Google+ stream posts) link to the URL.

Any time you change the URL of your blog, you will lose Google+ hosted comments - from your blog. The Google+ stream posts, however, are still out there - and they still link back to your blog.

Any existing Google+ stream posts, mentioning your blog, will link to the BlogSpot URL of your blog, after you migrate to a custom domain.

A properly executed custom domain migration will produce a BlogSpot URL redirected to the Domain URL. Any existing Google+ Stream posts will continue to link to the blog, because of the redirect.

Any existing Google+ comments, that are associated with your blog, are out there, in your readers Google+ streams.

All that you lose, with custom domain migration, is the ability to associate all of the different conversations about your blog, between the people conversing about your blog. Like URL changes in general, you lose a tiny bit of control - but you gain visibility.