So here's the pro's and con's of being private:
Pro's
-You know everyone who reads your blog
-Your blog isn't the first thing to pop up on Google if you Googled your name
-Because you know who's reading your blog you may feel more inclined to share more details of your life: where you live, when your going on vacation, naked pictures of your baby ect. (but to be honest, I don't anyways...)
Cons
-Restricts being able to let people know when your blog has been updated.
-Less readers and less comments. (we all know blogging is all about the readers and the comments!)
-Having to invite people to your blog instead of hoping they just "fall upon it" or having it be word of mouth. Sending out an email (or even finding their email) is just one more thing you have to do.
I can't decide which is better. To be honest, I'm leaning towards going public again. What do you think? I've added a poll to my sidebar. I realize everyone who is able to vote already has access to my blog, thus not really caring either way perhaps, but everyone's got an opinion...and thats all I'm looking for!
8 comments:
I say go public, and did you know you can make it so that you can't be googled and still be public? I took my blog off of all search engines....just something to think about! plus when you are private I rarely sign in, maybe I am lazy, so I only hop on over every once in awhile because it doesn't show it is updated on my sidebar so I just forget to look.
Hmmm, I can see both sides...I personally stay private because I use this as a journal most times and want to be able to tell something personal without a whole lot of people looking at it.
I voted public, but I see both sides. Especially having a kid and a house-- you have a zillion reasons to want to be private, but at the same time there are all the cons to being private you listed. I don't know if I'll want to be private once we have a kid or not; only time can prove that. But I feel very confident that if I go private no one in my family will care to take the time to look at it anymore. And that's sad! What I think is most important if you're public is to avoid last names, don't tell where you live, and don't tell when you're going on vacation (just tell after) just in case there is a freaky stalker out there.
I read Tiffany's comment up there... if you find out how to take your name off search engines, please let us know. I totally agree with her about the not looking though. For a long time I just thought you hadn't posted since nothing came up on the reader thing. I wish blogger would let you follow private people if they've approved you!
Wow, this was ridiculously long. Good luck on your decision. In all honesty, as long as I'm allowed to read your blog, I'm happy. :)
In the settings section, under the "basic" tab, the 5th question down says "Let search engines find your blog?". Just change that to no. I did that when I started my blog, and then I tested it several times... and had friends test it too... it works! No one knows about my blog unless I told them about it or they went blog-hopping from someone else's blog, which doesn't bother me. I just didn't want people in Europe or wherever to read it! I like being public because I've been able to stumble upon other people from high school and vice versa.
Well, I'm with you. I've always debated about going private, but I know that not as many people will look at it if I do (including most of my family, mainly because they don't know how to do it and wouldn't try hard enough to figure it out) and it doesn't show up when you update, which I LOVE, by the way. And it always makes me mad when I find someone I think I know and click on their's and it wont let me look and I have no other way of contacting them and well yeah you get the picture. But I do get a little nervous sometimes with the things I put on my public blog. I haven't had any crazies yet, but you never know! Anyway, sorry I'm not much help. Oh but about making your blog not trackable from a google search engine. I'm almost positive I posted once on how to do it on my blog. From what I've read in the other comments and the things I remember I think they have already given you pretty good instructions. Good luck! (oh and my mom was mad when you went private. She even called me to talk to me about it. Because she would always go look at yours and then click over to your mom's, chandras, etc) Oh and did you ever get the info on how to make sure people can't google your facebook account? If not let me know and I will tell you how to do that too!
Just to clarify she wasn't mad mad, just bummed that she couldn't get on anymore. How did you like that novel? :)
just a heads up if you haven't been on the no search engine thing thus far...you might have to change your blog address...because it still might be able to search all the previous blog posts...not sure if that makes any sense? but I do know if you change your address you can do it while saving all of your posts to the new address and then just deleting the old one...maybe that is complicated I don't know...?!
This is kind of an "Amen" but we put our blog so that you can't search for it (and you have plenty of instructions for how to do it above) but sometimes it can still be found on google because friends put our first and last names on their links or make reference to them somewhere on their blog. We're going to be changing our blog (including the address) in the next couple of months to remove all references to our last name, and I am trying to be diligent about not making reference to our city. It's nice when you live in a big metropolitan area because you can just say the area/region and feel rather safe.
Post a Comment