Category: Technology

The Blogger Canonical (?m=1) Issue Revisited

On 2025-11-19

In Blog Stuff, Dougiverse, Internet, The Algorithm

If you want to just see an explanation of the issue, you can skip to THE TECHNICAL ISSUE, below. First, I get to rant a bit and give some context.

When I first returned to blogging after eight years, it was not with a traditional blog: it was with The Doug Alone PROLOGUE. It was a place for me to post notes and recaps about the solo rpg stuff I was doing.¹ Only there was a problem. I actually mentioned it on my final post on that blog. Google more or less refused to index it.

It looks like it did at least briefly index a single page and then wiped it later.

Even though the blog was primarily meant as a play journal, there were elements that I wanted people to find. Only there was a primary error that kept showing up by way of explanation:

I had a vague notion of what that meant but the more I looked into it, the more I found posts by people insisting it was not an error. It was intended. It’s not up to Google to SEO for you. Maybe your blog isn’t worthy. Here’s a reddit thread with most of those things said from just a few months ago.

However, after Noism Games posted a post noting their Blogger/Blogspot traffic had just plummeted, I felt curious and looked again.

Doug Is Right: The Blogger Canonical Edition

Here’s the tl;dr: I am right. The SEO experts are wrong on this one. Neener neener.

I knew I was roughly correct. I’ve worked with a lot of different web platforms over the years and am well aware that Google is a fickle beast when it comes to promoting something (say, a one-off post about carpet beetles) over things that are more core to your blog identity (such as old posts about a variety of horror movies). However, months of Google flat out ignoring a blog with unique content was not consistent. At least a few pages would have passed The Algorithm.

Those more in the know of the technical issues probably know, and I had an idea but just not why Blogger/Blogspot was being hit by it. Had I cared more, I would probably have put it together earlier. Would I have still moved blogs? Oh yes. I like having my own space to play.

The Technical Issue

What’s the issue?

Webpages can have canonical tags. It’s not required. It just helps Google (and other search engine type things) to say that the page with the listing is the page you want to index. If you are on a platform where your content might bounce from page to page, you can use it to say that this is the correct page.

EXAMPLE: You have a cooking blog. You have a set of pages with different recipes and other pages that include snippets of those recipes and you don’t want Google to send folks to the pages with only the snippets (such as a category page or a front page that shows the most recent). You prefer your recipes to be front and center. You put the canonical tag on those pages.

In the specific case of Blogger/Blogspot, there’s a bit of code that basically tells each new page to have a tag on the post itself:

<b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/>

One aspect of this is to drop a simple line that gives the URL and says “this one, Google” in the <HEAD>:

<link href='https://dougalone.blogspot.com/2025/09/beginning-to-migrate-some-content-to.html' rel='canonical'/>

And that should be well in good except for a technical glitch on Google’s side. It does not scan the blog like a person on a home computer will. It scans largely as a mobile device. And Blogger/Blogspot, a GOOGLE PRODUCT, tries to be helpful by serving up a ?m=1 version of the page. Old themes did not have a native mobile version. Newer ones do, but the artifact from Ye Olde Times is still there.

Which means that Google gets a link like this for the page linked above:

https://dougalone.blogspot.com/2025/09/beginning-to-migrate-some-content-to.html?m=1

You can likely see where this is going. If you click on it, it is identical to the previous page, except the rel='canonical' is not pointing to that link, it is posted to the .html, not the .html?m=1 version.

This means for every Blogger/Blogspot page scanned, Google sees a page constantly serving up alternate pages and because the ?m=1 keeps persisting, it constantly fails to find the canonical pages.

What’s the Fix?

Unfortunately, the two primary fixes are both on Google engineers and since this has been brewing for a few years, I have no idea if they will fix it. Hopefully so, because Blogger/Blogspot is a nice all-in-one blog for people who don’t want to fiddle too hard and just want to get their content out there.

FIX #1 would be for Google to not treat ?x=y as wholly different pages at least in the case of mobile pages where the canonical link has identical content. I appreciate there are lots of cases where it is different content, but there should be a way to prevent that.

FIX #2 would be for Blogger/Blogspot to stop appending the ?m=1 to mobile pages. There are better ways to handle that. That feels like an artifact from 2010 era internet. Back when you had completely separate mobile sites. Ah, I remember those days unfondly.

What can we do as users of the product? I’m not sure. If you look, there are suggestions for Javascript workarounds. I am attempting to use the script at this page. Go gently into that night and double check before you use it, yourself.

I also did try updating my robots.txt file to tell Google to ignore ?m=1 pages. Will it work? I don’t know. I’m not precisely holding my breath. If I remember to check in a couple of months and it has worked, I’ll let you know.

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google
Disallow:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /search
Disallow: /share-widget
Disallow: /*?m=1
Allow: /
Sitemap: https://dougalone.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml

Obviously, if you want to use that you want to change the final line to be whatever your blog’s address is. I’ve seen variations of that across multiple posts so I don’t know where it originated. Apparently older Blogger blogs had a baked in robots.txt but mine didn’t. I had to add it whole cloth.

Let’s see what the outcome of this double approach might be.

NOTE: It is possible that Google will eventually scan it via a non-mobile-first scanner and make all this a non-issue. Just 16-months seems like a fair time to run a test.

There is a paradox of solo play where a lot of folks, myself included, have a strong urge to share it with someone. The initial idea was not a blog. I thought about streaming some stuff on Youtube. Since I ended up figuring out a lot of mistakes, tweaking a lot of notions, and so forth: I am glad I went for a format that did not involve me just sitting there confused and sweaty on camera. ↩︎

Just deleted most of my Patreon follows, including the free ones

By Doug Bolden

On 2025-10-22

In Internet, Rants, Technology, The Algorithm

This morning I got a message from a Patreon Creator that was a simple “Hey” but based on previous interactions, I know any response to it would result in this person asking for more money. Let’s call them Person K.

I one time, now years ago, actually did send them some money outside of Patreon. I eventually said I wasn’t going to send them any more and after a few exchanges stop replying. Over the next few years, they sent me a lot:

I obfuscated it because I’m not interested in real naming-and-shaming but that should give you an idea. Each of those blue-boxes is a message, more or less. Most are friendly. Some are a bit insistent. All are basically asking for money. I skipped a few because I think I had enough to establish the point.

Not a single Doug-reply is in there. I left their Patreon a bit back, including the “free tier” [they sent me a “bye Doug :'(” response]. Then they kept messaging me. Not so frequent that I cared all that much.

Today was just a different sort of day, though. The kind of day where I was ready to delete most of the flack off my digital landscape.

I figured out how to block Person K — which gave me a message that Patreon had removed me from their page, so I guess somehow I was a zombie there — and gave a pretty big think about how I wanted to use & engage with Patreon if I kept using it. The final answer, after around thirty total seconds: not much. Very nearly none.

My problems with…well, sort of with Patreon but buckle up because Doug’s about to go off

I have always been a moderate- to lower-tier user, even at peak. There are lots of reasons why I have never gotten deeper into it. Let’s come up with something like a starter three really quick (# given is roughly the order I’d put the problem):

(5) The interface is fairly poor for a website that is one of the major backbones of the indie creator scene.

(3) It quickly gets costly. While backing a couple of Creators is not a whole lot of cash, it is easy to end up backing 10+ and seeing a monthly bill rivaling old school cable bills. Especially with how many Patreons have that stupid “$20+ a month to get your name at the end of my videos” thing.

“I’d like to thank DickMaster2000, the Might Gooble, Tom the Tominator…”

I personally don’t tend to engage with content on a subscription basis, ever. (4) I do things in little bursts.

This means I would back a podcast, listen to some of their backlog, wait a few months (paying the whole time to not use them), and then do another backlog. At this point I might leave or I might wait another few months to pick up another backlog.

If I ever left, if I ever downgraded, I might be losing out in months of content that I could access as long as I kept paying.

Which brings me to a fourth reason which is #2 in the final list, though this is less Patreon-specific and more the whole damned thing that is happening right now:

(2) Business models that promote FOMO [fear-of-missing-out] are inherently problematic: freemium memberships, gachas, crowdfunding with backer-exclusives. Even when they enable some creators to make special content for their best supporters, there are very few safeguards for the backer-side and drive creators to work around this “value added” model.

FOMO is a billion-dollar industry driver across its many facets and a major slice of a lot of the modern hobby landscape. Apps that allow extra features, sites with minor upgrades, games with a few bonus aesthetics, gacha pulls, overspending on crowd-sourcing for extra features, member videos, etc.

I am not necessarily blaming all content-creators. Some do try to take care of their content-consumers. Some are in a place where this is the best way for them to publish their content. Some work very, very hard to make it worthwhile.

And, to clarify: exclusive content is not necessarily evil, no more than having a unique painting for sale at an art festival is evil, but when combined with the structure of the modern content marketplace, it has to be careful.

These massive third parties that run the websites and portals make it a constant focus for content-creators [from big media empires to smaller creators] to drive content-consumers to enter into a buy-in relationship. Break the old game with new characters. Make your character look more unique. Get a campaign exclusive t-shirt that you might never wear. A bonus chapter for your favorite book series. An exclusive series of videos shot in the director’s bedroom!

Come inside, friends, here is exclusive!

Which is where we get to #1 in the ever growing list:

(1) Business models that thrive on parasocial relationships, pseudo-communities, and consumer addiction are inherently evil.

In many cases, they force consumers to spend a lot of time and effort to keep engaging with these communities and hobbies. Not just with the central creators but also the other members of the community, including trophies for heavy interaction and fake incentives to share memberships and similar addiction-driving behaviors.

We all lose (maybe not the platform owners)

These last two feed on each other. Creators are driven into increasingly less-profitable time-sinks to push a business model that has the real capability of driving consumers into feeling actively responsible for the well-being of their favorite creators.

That latter point cannot be stated loud enough. Whether it is time [like, comment, subscribe, share] or actual money and effort, our relationship to content creators is in a terribly strange place now. With many smaller creators having no other real options but to encourage the same predatory behavior that enables other entities [larger content creators and platforms] to also feed upon those same consumers.

Platforms like Youtube and Twitch have created a new type of rock star for us all to want to be. One with the doors kicked wide open. Only, the rules keep changing. The revenue keeps dropping. The user experience gets worse. Creators start tacking on Patreons, memberships, donation drives, subscription drives, an all sorts of behaviors that take away from the core experience that justifies the content creator even being on the damned platform to begin with.

Too often, your success is not about whether you are good or talented or just in it for fun and having a good time. Over and over the message is driven home: success is doing exactly the sort of thing that increases profits for the platform owners, the revenue handlers, and all the people who use them for advertisement. Keep your fans engaging so their data can be more widely shared with entities that are barely required to even admit they in the food chain. .

At best, it is a terrible stop-gap for a broken creator-consumer relationship where a few entities own so much of what we can consume while more indie folk are constantly trying to stay afloat [and here comes GenAI to tighten the screws further while eating the indie creations to learn how to emulate them].

At worst, this is an active abuse of psychological principles that have plagued humanity all the way back to our hunter-gatherer tribal roots. The need for community. The need for recognition. The need to provide. The fear of scarcity.

[Recap] The list in order of importance and slightly expanded

Business models that thrive on parasocial relationships, pseudo-communities, and consumer addiction are inherently evil.
Business models that promote FOMO [fear-of-missing-out] are inherently problematic.
Patreon quickly gets costly if you support more than a small number of Creators or feel the need [see #1 and #2] to engage at a higher tier.
I do things in little bursts, which systems like Patreon take advantage: you either engage constantly or you generate a backlog where you keep paying to avoid missing the content you already “own.”
The interface is fairly poor for a website all about connecting Creators to their consumers, which again means you have to engage frequently or spend time navigating past other temptations.

Um…Doug? We were talking about Patreon…

Right. RIGHT. Sorry, I get a bit ranty when I have a headache.

Also, like…when I don’t have a headache. Just, you know, in general.

The above thoughts had been on my mind for a while. The three “about Patreon” parts (#3, #4, and #5) are really why I just never could enjoy Patreon, personally: the UI, the cost, and the way I actually like enjoying the things I enjoy.

I didn’t like going to the website very much. I refused to get the app. I would get notifications and sometimes actually follow the link to get whatever file or post it was about. I would sometimes skip a month or two and just miss stuff. Every time I had a backlog I would just get frustrated trying to figure out what stuff for which I had “paid” was actually available [note: about that paying for…it’s complicated for such a model].

I still kept it up for a small handful of creators, some just a month or two, because I liked to support them. What’s that, did I feel responsible for them? Yeah, kind of. That is part of the problem, see? You start to feel like you, the viewer, are somehow beholden to pre-pay for content you may or may not enjoy because a lot of those content-creators are nice people with a dream.

However, when Person K from the first section of this post contacted me, it was a breaking point.

I went through a list.

Every Patreon I followed, paid or not, that I primarily enjoyed off-Patreon, I instantly unfollowed.

If I like their content on Patreon but was only there for short glimpses into the background “behind the scenes” type commentary [i.e., one that played, inadvertently or not against my sense of FOMO], I unfollowed.

If I was just there to support them for a bit and had already accomplished that, I unfollowed.

If I was only keeping one around to eventually get around to getting the content to which I had already subscribed but hadn’t actually consumed, I unfollowed. Yes, I lost all that content.

And on a personally selfish level: was I getting my money and time back or more? If not, I unfollowed.

Finally, was it sparking the hell out of some joy..

…if not? Yep.

There were times these points clashed. There were some that actually sparked joy but had exclusive tiers I didn’t want to bother with. Some were worth it but I would rather engage with them elsewhere.

Absolutely none of the people I unfollowed today were honestly bad actors (Person K is the closest to an exception but I can understand wanting money). They were all lovely creators. Just Patreon and all those points above showed up on a day when I headache.

The two which remain + some bonus shout outs

To end this on a kind of positive note, here are the two that survived all the cuts:

Witch House Media: I have been following them since their HPPodcraft days and they put out regular, good content about a niche genre that I adore.
Tana Pigeon | Mythic: I use Mythic a lot and I love reading the magazine. While I do get to take part in some polls and such and ask questions and whatnot, the Patreon is well worth the fee since I would have spent that money on the books and zines anyhow. It also lets me get some news about something that is a major hobby of mine. Excellently run.

Two that I did not keep for various reasons but did deeply appreciate are Dean Spencer Art and Brandon Scott. Dean Spencer puts out some of the best stock art for content creators and has regular posts and engagement. I just would rather go back to buying the pieces I will use, when I use them. Brandon Scott makes wonderfully creative stuff. He is the most likely candidate for someone I will go back and refollow once my headache clears.

Bonus shout out: Cracking the Cryptic. Lots of interactions, lots of content. I just reached a point I’d rather watch them on Youtube and buy their games/books.

Credits

The “Empty Tunnel”: Photo from from Getty Images via Unsplash+ License.