Friday, October 3, 2008

Blog Comparison - Blogger vs. WordPress vs. TypePad

Choosing Blogger (a Google service) as your blogging platform is an easy decision for newbie bloggers and a tough decision for experienced/professional bloggers. I prefer Blogger over TypePad and WordPress. The following are my reasons for choosing Blogger:
  1. Fast search engine indexing - New blog posts show up in Google's Blog Search results within minutes. This is especially important for bloggers blogging about hot news topics like politics and celebrities.
  2. Usability - Easy to write and format text and to upload pictures and videos. Blogger has a really low barrier to entry for new bloggers and does not require much prior experience with internet tools. If you know how to use an e-mail client like Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, or Gmail then you can definitely use Blogger. It should be noted that the WordPress's free service is now competing with Blogger on low barrier to entry.
  3. Interact with readers - The are a lot of people (I could not find exact #) with a Google or Gmail account, each of which can easily comment on a Blogger blog post or participate in Blogger's social features without having to login with a separate account. For example, Google's (i.e., Blogger's) new follower gadget allows readers to publicly display their affinity for your blog. On the other hand, many advanced WordPress blogs require that you create a new account with that blog specifically for the purpose of commenting on that blog. Typepad mitigates this issue with their TypeKey authentication service, which is similar to OpenId.
  4. It is free and fast - In similar fashion to WordPress's basic service, Blogger does not charge hosting or subscription costs. Further, Blogger's page load times have been consistently fast.
  5. Multiple authors - Blogger and WordPress allow you to have mutliple authors per blog, free of charge.
Features that I wish Blogger had that TypePad, WordPress, and others do have:
  • Post previews on blog home page - Give readers the ability to quickly scan the blog home page to see several recent blog posts by splitting posts so that only a post's first paragragh shows up on the home page.
  • Customization of blog post title and meta tags - Blogger does not let you customize a blog post's title and meta tags which is really important for SEO.
  • Labels have limited SEO value - Blogger blogs' robot.txt file tell search engines to not index all URLs starting with "/search". Specifically, the labels in a label's sidebar widget are not indexed by search engines. If they were indexed by search engines, they would be a great way to associate a myriad of keywords to your blog posts. Other blogging platforms serve this SEO purpose with the use of categories and tags. My solution as a Blogger blogger is to create HTML sidebar widgets with lists of keyword phrases with each keyword phrase linking to a blog post. See this blog's sidebar's three "Most Read..." sections, or, for a better example see the sidebar of Two Knobby Tires Guide to Colorado Hiking, Biking, and Camping. Similarly, I do not think that Blogger's archive widget adds any SEO value so I configure it to be a drop-down menu that does not expose the archive URLs to search engines robots.
The subsequent chart shows unique visitors (in millions) for Blogger, WordPress, and TypePad:


Which blogging platform do you prefer and why?
Posted by Robert J Miller

14 comments:

  1. Interestingly I tried using Drupal as blogging platform initially because I wasn't sure of the direction I wanted to go and Drupal offered lots more flexibility. However, it is very hard for a newbie to use as it was not very intuitive.

    I've also tried using Blogger but like you I was dissatisfied with its flexibility. Another big deterrent was the fact that I wouldn't own the content and if for any reason Google didn't like what I had to say they could take it down at any time. I soon came to the realization that I was going to have to move my content from Blogger eventually if I wanted to customize my blog more. That's why I decided to go with WordPress.

    I am very satisfied with WordPress. It is very easy to use and it is very flexible. You can easily add on functionality by simply adding a WordPress plugin. I think most people underestimate the power of WordPress. It can be easily scaled from a simple blog to a near full blown CMS and can handle tons of traffic thrown at it when configured properly.
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  2. Kevin, thanks for the info. We used Typepad in June and July but couldn't come up with a justification for continuing to pay for a blogging platform.

    At the time we chose Blogger I didn't know WordPress had a free hosted version. It sounds like WordPress is awesome and definitely worth a look. I'm hoping Google continues to improve Blogger and that they don't remove any of my posts :). Have you heard of Google removing people's Blogger posts? If so, why?
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  3. I've heard of people's Blogger sites getting taken down before, here's an example: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-todd-huston/2008/06/29/google-shuts-down-anti-obama-sites-its-blogger-platform?nl=tech&emc=tech

    The nice thing about WordPress is that it's community driven in that users are constantly developing new plugins to enhance the functionality. Frequent platform updates allow for improved functionality and widen its scope as well.

    There's basically two types of WP blogs; WordPress.com-hosted and self-hosted (WordPress.org). Most hosting companies nowadays come with WP preinstalled so getting your own self-hosted WP site up and running is a piece of cake.
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  4. Kevin, did you see the update at the bottom of that link you posted? It hypothesizes that people were pressing the "spam" button at the top of Blogger blogs. that is a lot less concerning then Google manually choosing to take down a blog. Further, Google doing anything manually would be totally uncharacteristic...they only know how to work in computer algorithms :)
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  5. Thanks! This helped me make my decision! I am already on Wordpress, but was looking to possibly shift. I haven't had any complaints, I simply was doing my research. I am staying on Wordpress, but definitely hope Google keeps improving Blogger for future opportunities.
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  6. I'm not sure why people are saying that Google owns the content published in Blogger since it's clear within the Terms of Services that writer is the sole proprietor of the content:

    'Your Intellectual Property Rights. *Google claims no ownership or control over any Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services.* You or a third party licensor, as appropriate, retain all patent, trademark and copyright to any Content you submit, post or display on or through Google services and you are responsible for protecting those rights, as appropriate.'
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  7. Nice one. I think I might stick with blogger. Does having your own domain name help with SEO or is having *.blogspot.com ok?
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  8. My recommendation is to have your own domain name connected to your blogger blog instead of using *.blogspot.com but I don't know the exact benefits.
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  9. My experience: Word Press is fine but Blogger is easier, perhaps because I am more experienced in it. The big blot on Blogger is that they want to force the followers crap on you even if you don't want it. It was somebody's brilliant idea and they insist that you take it. I have had to delete entire blogs because of the followers.
    Thank You all.
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  10. The Specter, please elaborate on "followers crap" and why you had to delete entire blogs because of it. Thanks.
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  11. I only wanted to know how to get my blog advertised through wordpress.com but to my surprise and disappointment wordpress doesn't offer advertising facilitiy so i am thinking to switch from wordpress to blogger because i want to advertise my blog, if any one can help me on getting some other blog that is comprehensive like wordpress but also allows advertising. any help would be really appreciated.

    looking forward

    farrukh

    farrukhtaara@gmail.com
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  12. I'm trying to switch my blog over from Typepad to Blogger because I don't want to continue to pay for it. I read somewhere up there that you said something about having your own domain name connect with google. How does that work?
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  13. In your blogger blog, go to "Settings->Publishing" to tell blogger that you want to use your own domain name instead of a ".blogspot.com" domain. Your domain provider will need to point your domain to a blogger specified address (e.g., CNAME Record,Source=blog.twoknobbytires.com, Destination=ghs.google.com).
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  14. Post previews on blog home page - Give readers the ability to quickly scan the blog home page to see several recent blog posts by splitting posts so that only a post's first paragragh shows up on the home page.

    actually you can! its the jump break feature. you can enable on individual posts or change the setting so its on every single post.
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