Preview the upcoming Blogger related content feature

by Greenlava

I visited Webmaster tools yesterday and was surprised to see an unusually large number of crawl errors. At the top of  “Not Found” error list there was this strange URL:

http://www.bloggersentral.com/related-content.g?q=

After some investigation, I found out that the errors are most likely caused by a script, added by Blogger server when each page loads. It turned out the error has something to do with a Blogger’s upcoming feature: Blogger Related Content. Blogger Buzz, in What’s New With Blogger gave a clue on this new feature,

We’ll also be showcasing our new content discovery feature that lets you uncover interesting and related content based on the topics of the blog you’re currently reading.

Looking at the screenshot provided, it looks like a link called “Related Posts & Media” will be added to Blogger navbar. Clicking the link will open a dropdown containing the related content.

I’ve done some testing based on the available info from the source code, and finally came up with the URL below. This is the URL for BloggerSentral.com’s related content:

http://www.blogger.com/related-content.g?q=http://www.bloggersentral.com/

and this is what shows up:blogger related posts and media 2It displays related post links from other Blogger blogs, video thumbnails from Youtube, and Twitter updates. Blog posts and tweets will open in new windows while videos will play right inside the dropdown.

You can narrow down the related content by selecting one of the three (most relevant?) topics  on the right.

blogger related content video playback blogger related content topics

Want to find out content related to your own blog?

  1. Simply replace http://www.bloggersentral.com/  with your blog URL, like this:
    http://www.blogger.com/related-content.g?q=YOUR_BLOG_URL
  2. Make sure you include the trailing slash (as in .com/).
  3. Paste the URL into the address bar.
  4. Press Enter and see what comes out!

What do you think?

20 comments to "Preview the upcoming Blogger related content feature"

Beben Koben,  April 12, 2011 at 6:09 PM    

yes master, this is give to us for looking my related blog...
but any one thing can do it, like this too...on navbar any next blog!
thanks^^ \m/

adi,  April 12, 2011 at 9:38 PM    

awesome! good work guys.
Tq verry much! Tq verry much!

Indah,  April 13, 2011 at 12:23 AM    

Hello, i want ask, how to repair not found 404 because related-content.g?q=?

Best.

SD,  April 13, 2011 at 12:09 PM    

Thanks for the info and the example to test this.
But, I didn't got the fetched "posts" from this way as really "related posts" with respect to my blog's subject/theme.

Swapan Das
http://placentrex.blogspot.com/

Anne Lyken-Garner,  April 13, 2011 at 7:48 PM    

It's okay, but I'd rather get stuff about actual blogs. Most of the stuff (in the blog section) were updates posted on twitter and youtube, about my blog's TOPICS. They were not stuff from my blog.

sir rob,  April 13, 2011 at 10:36 PM    

Could this case an alarm to us? I have tons of it and I'm a bit scared. OTOH, how about the "restricted by robots.txt".

How to resolve them? Thanks

cores,  April 14, 2011 at 6:04 PM    

thanks... and i'm trying now...

Greenlava,  April 15, 2011 at 8:17 PM    

@sir rob
I wouldn't worry about it. I think Blogger will resolve this once/before they release the feature, I sure hope so :)

"restricted by robots.txt" is a standard in Blogger. It's for preventing duplicate content. It's not a bad thing.

Carole Cristine,  April 21, 2011 at 4:29 AM    

Thanks for figuring this out!!!! Not sure I want to drive traffic to other sites that way though.

So what happens to the blogs that I have removed the navigation bar on, I wonder? Does that mean I won't have that feature?

Do you know if that 404 error is affecting the pace at which Google crawls our blogs?

Thanks!!

auctions,  April 21, 2011 at 5:31 AM    

nice info bro.....thanks...

Greenlava,  April 22, 2011 at 11:18 AM    

@Carole T
I guess no navbar means no related content feature.
I notice these two lines has been added in robots.txt file:

Disallow: /related-content.g
Disallow: /related_content_helper.html

that means the crawlers no longer visit them, good.

Carole Cristine,  April 23, 2011 at 2:23 PM    

Well I was kinda hoping for that...I don't want it. But I have that error in my Webmaster tools. Is that something I neeed to worry about or should I just ignore it, do you think??

Greenlava,  April 23, 2011 at 9:11 PM    

@Carole T
I'm ignoring mine :)

Carole Cristine,  April 24, 2011 at 11:03 PM    

Thank you for the info!!!

Buzz,  April 29, 2011 at 4:36 PM    

I think it's still something that is useless instead of developing of useful tips as META dynamics, the caterogies indexable ... Blogger disappoints me more and more.

SEO,  May 9, 2011 at 5:36 PM    

Your blog happens to be not only informative but also very creative too. Well I was kind of hoping for that...I don't want it. But I have that error in my Webmaster tools. Thanks share this good think.

phycrewz,  May 12, 2011 at 1:38 PM    

hello guru, can we delete the crawl errors report in the webmaster tools? mine have so many 'duplicate content'..

M.Pinto @ ProHacker,  August 26, 2011 at 9:43 AM    

It's a "404" page bro..

MangDe @ Blogger Tips,  August 29, 2011 at 7:40 PM    

i did it bro.. but it comes with 404 error not found, any other way?

Harish,  September 3, 2011 at 1:04 AM    

really a grt work .. but the link is going for 404 error.

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