How to get in Blogger Related Content Search

The new Blogger Search is still in development stages and Google as always is absolutely quiet on this. However, going by the source of code of the JavaScript inserted in all Blogspot blogs, one can conclusively find a sure shot way of getting included in the Blogger related content Search and benefit from the traffic received.

A fragment of JavaScript added to Blogspot blogs is as follows:-

function showRelatedContent(args) {
      var el = document.getElementById('related-iframe');
      if (el.parentNode.style.display != 'none') {
        el.parentNode.style.display = 'none';
        document.onclick = showRelatedContent.prevOnClick;
        return;
      }
      
      

Looking at it, one can obviously see a mention of the "parentNode.style.display !=none" referring to the iframe of Blogger's Navigation Bar which most of the blogspot users "hide" using the css #navbar-iframe{display:none}. So, it appears that blogs that have disabled the Navigation Bar will not show related content. Moreover, going by some preliminary tests, it appears that Blogger checks which blogs have disabled the Navigation bar and on its basis decides which blogs to include in Blogger related content search. This is much similar to the behavior shown by the Next Blog feature in Blogger's Navigation Bar which also only links to blogs that have shown the Navigation Bar. However, for non-competitive search queries, blogs without the Navigation Bar also appear in results. It also appears that recently updated content is given preference in terms of ranking.

So ultimately, you must unhide the Blogger Navigation Bar if you wish to get included in Blogger Search results. So, it appears that Blogger Team is now playing smart to force people into showing the Navigation Bar.

Blogger Related Content Search Engine-First Screenshot and Review

After a lot of speculation over what "related-content.g?q=" was, I have finally come to know why a new piece of javascript was added to all the blogs hosted on blogger. Amazingly, it turned out to be much bigger a feature than I expected.

The above mentioned JavaScript is added by Blogger to create a Blogspot only search engine to enable users to search updates made by blogspot users related to a particular topic. As an additional plus, it also displays realtime Twitter updates made by Twitter users on any particular topic. It also displays related videos probably from Youtube.

Edited Image of Google Search. Not actual Blogger Search

The search results page at this time is nothing but a crude HTML page clearly implying that the Blogger team is still developing it. Moreover, lack of custom styling indicates that there is still a lot of time before this feature goes public. Videos provided are still not linked but show only a thumbnail image. Going by the source code, Google real-time search has been used to display Twitter updates. Links on the result pages are dofollow without any involvement of JavaScript of any kind. Moreover, related-content.g is not disallowed in Blogger.com robots.txt implying that PageRank would certainly pass onto these links.

This is how Blogger Related Content Search Results look like right now for the search term "Blogger"

To see this in action, type http://blogger.com/related-content.g?q=[Your Search Query] in your address bar. e.g. If you wish to see content related to this blog, go to http://blogger.com/related-content.g?q=computer-help-tips.blogspot.com.

Update:15/3/2011: Yesterday on the Blogger Buzz blog, Chang Kim, Product Manager at Blogger posted this:-

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.

This is how Blogger's Related post and media search will look

So, now it is official that such a feature is surely going to be added in Blogger. Also, Blogger is going to get an overhauled Wordpress like layout in the upcoming months. Still feel you should be on Wordpress? Nah!

Read this on: How to get Included in Blogger Related Content Search.