Skip to main content

Enabling Blogger Backlinks

Blogger now provides Backlinks, just like Trackbacks, to keep track of all the webpages that link to your Blogger post. Backlinks basically is based on the link: operator of Blog Search. This imposes a restiction: All sites linking to your blog will need to be indexed by Blog Search.

Here's how you can enable Blogger Backlinks:

On your Blogger Dashboard, under Settings>Comments, you'll find an option to turn Backlinks ON/OFF.

Blogger Backlinks On/Off

Now, if you are using a standard Blogger template, you need nothing else to turn Backlinks on. But if you have your own template, then you'll have to make changes to your template code. This is what you'll be required to do in this case:

1. Place the following code between <Blogger> and </Blogger>

<BlogItemBacklinksEnabled>
<a class="comment-link" href="<$BlogItemPermalinkUrl$>#links">
Links to this post</a>
</BlogItemBacklinksEnabled>


2. Now within the <ItemPage> and </ItemPage>, place the following piece of code:

<BlogItemBacklinksEnabled>
<a name="links"></a>
<h4>Links to this post:</h4>
<dl id="comments-block">
<BlogItemBacklinks>
<dt class="comment-title">
<$BlogBacklinkControl$>
<a href="<$BlogBacklinkURL$>" rel="nofollow">
<$BlogBacklinkTitle$></a> <$BlogBacklinkDeleteIcon$>
</dt>
<dd class="comment-body"><$BlogBacklinkSnippet$>
<br />
<span class="comment-poster">
<em>posted by <$BlogBacklinkAuthor$> @
<$BlogBacklinkDateTime$></em>
</span>
</dd>
</BlogItemBacklinks>
</dl>
<p class="comment-timestamp"><$BlogItemBacklinkCreate$></p>
</BlogItemBacklinksEnabled>


You may need to change the CSS styles that blend well in your template. Turning of backlinks is simple. Again from the Settings > Comments, select the Hide Backlinks option. In case you wish to disable Backlinks for individual posts, then its done the same way as turning off comments. You just edit the post in question and change the options that appear below the posting form:

Blogger Backlinks


That is it. With the introduction of Backlinks, Bloggers no longer need to use Technorati tags and other tools to know who are linking to their posts. Just how efficient is this offering from Google, we'll have to wait and see.

Technorati Tags:

Comments

Martin said…
I've never understood backlinks, or trackbacks - what benefits do they serve?

Cheers
Rog said…
Hey dude, how did you get the google search engine imbedded in your blog? I think that its pretty cool and I'd like to copy you :) Also, do you know how one would get ones blog indexed under google when searching for their name?
Anonymous said…
Back when I was maintaining my Blogger blogs, I messed around with a third party trackback system, but it wasn't all that great. Just when I up and move to WordPress, the introduce trackbacks. Sheesh.

Martin: Trackbacks are when you don't want to post a comment because you've actually written a blog entry on your own blog that covers what you'd say in the comment. So in your entry, you put in the URL of the post you want to comment on and then your blog software automatically pings and comments on the blog you want to comment on. That way, you create a link from post to post.
enginerd said…
Ara:
Blogger has always been found wanting with the features it offers. Trackback(Backlinks) was one long awaited. I wonder when would they allow categorization of posts?

Rog:
To get your blog indexed, you'll have to submit your URL to Google here.

For the Google search box on your blog, I've mailed you the html that you'll need to add to your page.

Martin:
I too had a tough time figuring out what it exactly was, until I stumbled upon this piece.

Cheers,
enginerd
Martin said…
Right. Thanks, the both of you.

I think I'll pass.

:)

Cheers
Anonymous said…

Popular posts from this blog

Gmail Chat Disabled

The fact that it happened does not surprise me but that it took so long for our network administrators to figure it out does. And if you are wondering how do you disable Gmail's chat features on your network, you only need locking DNS lookups to chatenabled.mail.google.com , by returning 127.0.0.1 .

Advertising Billboards as Rain Covers

Advertising billboards are put to use as Pakistani refugees, left homeless after the October 8 earthquake, set up their tents in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan. [via SFGate ] Technorati Tags: Pakistan Earthquake

Community effort to create a single persistence model for the Java community

A community effort led by Sun Microsystems is aiming to create a single 'Plain Old Java Object' persistence model to provide a single object/relational mapping facility for Java app developers in J2SE and J2EE. Paul Krill writes In a letter to the “Java Technology Community” on Friday, specification leads on Java Specification Request (JSR) 220, which is the proposal for Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0, and JSR-243, for Java Data Objects, state that the two technologies feature divergent persistence models. “This divergence has caused confusion and debates among Java developers, and is not in the best of interest of the Java community,” said JSR-220 leader Linda DeMichiel who also is a Sun employee, and Craig Russell, a staff engineer at Sun who leads JSR-243. “In response to these requests [for an end to the unwanted divide], Sun Microsystems is leading a community effort to create a single POJO (Plain Old Java Object) persistence model for the Java community,” the letter said.