Blogspot's Unnecessary .co.uk Change

In the last few weeks I've been disgruntled to find that Blogspot (the blogging outlet I use) has implemented some serious changes with regards to UK-based blogs and their URLs. Much like Facebook's irritating enforced upgrades to user profiles and the confusing new Timeline, Blogspot has not asked users if they want to opt into the scheme - it just happened. Without wishing to rant about technical details, my URL is important to me and I like having control over it, but now suddenly readers are redirected to a blogspot.co.uk domain. If you've been affected too then you may want to read on.

Why the change is detrimental to UK bloggers

• If you're using software such as SEOMoz to analyse the authority of a blog or website then you base your judgement on two categories, each marked out of 100: the Page Authority (how many links are pointing to the page, both internally and externally) and the Domain Authority (how good your actual domain is in the eyes of Google, whether that means Wordpress, Blogspot, Tumblr or just a simple .com for a website). Sites with good rankings include the BBC and national newspapers, which are ranking in the 90s. 
• The DA for Blogspot.com stands at 96, which is great as it shows that Blogspot is well regarded. Sadly, as Blogspot.co.uk is so new and hasn't found its feet, the DA is only 36, which isn't as good. Obviously PA is a much better indicator of how useful and popular a blog is, but the new .co.uk domain hasn't considered all of your previous hard work in link-building and will have left your blog with a worthless PA of 1. As an indicator, my PA was in the 30s, which is respectable for a small-time blog, especially as it's something I run in my spare time. 
• If a website or company was looking for bloggers to work with and stumbled across yours, they might not be aware of the problems caused by Blogspot.co.uk. They would look at your PA of 1 and think that you weren't making any effort to build links or raise your profile, thereby losing you an important connection. 

How to (slightly) avoid the change

• Fortunately you don't have to give out a whole new URL. Readers are redirected to the new one, which is helpful, but new viewers may just think you don't know your own blog address if you're giving them a business card that features a .com URL.
• Type in the original blog address and then add '/ncr' at the end. I read this on another blog and it's a really useful tip - the letters stand for 'no country redirect'. This will take you to the old blog format, with the old address - great for you, but not so great for writing on a business card. Still, if you want to see things the traditional way, this is how to do it.
• Short of taking these steps, there is little that can be done to avoid the onslaught of Blogspot's not so useful evolution. It's a shame that they haven't made this change optional, as those of us who work in Search Engine Optimisation (as I do) would gladly stick to our original domain in order to keep our hard-earned links. 

Ok, enough of the technological ranting. I hope I've explained the situation as it stands, so that other bloggers can learn about the impact of these unhelpful changes. 

Now, let's get back to fashion...