or, "sorry Sir, your URL is already taken, abused and abandoned... Please try again."

• freshblog.blogspot.com


• freshblogger.blogspot.com

This points to two things, I guess. First, URL's are being taken up and it will get tougher to get a good one as they're scooped up and subsequently vacated. There's also the possibility that a site with more inbounds and a broader appeal will buy the relevant .com domain and muscle in on your google rank. My britblog experience is an example of this, & I guess at some point if I'm serious I'll register a domain name and cough up for it.

More importantly, though, I think your web address only matters in the real world of print ads, business cards and radio spots. If you're expecting people to find your site through search engines, then the name and the meta tags are much more significant than the URL. Currently, for instance, a google search for freshblog finds this site and not freshblog.com, despite my comedy URL. I guess if freshblog.com comes back to life in an interactive and functional way, then I'll get britblogged all over again, but for now things are groovy.

I used to think that blogger should erase blogs that haven't been updated for a given period of time, & make the URL's available again. I've changed my mind for the reasons outlined above, and also because I'm now the proprietor (slum lord) of just such a blog. I kept it because my regular readers (both of them) needed to be redirected to Freshblog, and because it came in handily high on a google search, and I wanted people who were looking for britblog: the directory to find me too. It's less important now that freshblog has taken on a life of its own.

Filed in: blogger, blogspot, freshblog, blogtech