How to find other blogs to read

<b>This is a quick guide to searching for other blogs to read, now that Google's blog-search tool has been retired</b><b>.</b> <br /><b><br /></b><div style="clear: both;"></div><a name="more"></a><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgaar84ZIZXXja_KM__vGBZ8yKeQY6mp3R4O0coh3MXM9mhYpRQAIYfGvaeUjHGHjmCyKZjOTkc9j393EAhV1VyNYiCCBTiO6CcGOOqQkRe8ki7n1JH3zNVL_wL1vX4JFPu3_LEgbNFnHG/w810-h577-no/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Locating interesting blogs and websites to regularly read - applying a magnifying glass to the internet" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgaar84ZIZXXja_KM__vGBZ8yKeQY6mp3R4O0coh3MXM9mhYpRQAIYfGvaeUjHGHjmCyKZjOTkc9j393EAhV1VyNYiCCBTiO6CcGOOqQkRe8ki7n1JH3zNVL_wL1vX4JFPu3_LEgbNFnHG/w810-h577-no/" title="Finding other blogs to read" width="280" /></a></div>If you write a blog, then reading other blogs "in your niche" (ie about similar topics) is a really good idea. This lets you keep up with what's going on and what other people are saying, and helps you to think up new blog-post ideas.<br /><br />An <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/08/why-rss-subscribe-to-posts-is-important.html">RSS-reader</a> is a great tool for managing everything you need to read:  it's basically a folder with links to all the blogs and websites you want to follow, which shows when they have been updated.   To make best use of it. as soon as you see an interesting website, go to your RSS reader software and subscribe to the website's RSS-feed there-and-then: otherwise you will almost certainly forget.   Alternatively you can subscribe-by-email - provided the site offers that option - but many bloggers find that their email gets overwhelmed if they do this with more than a few sites.<br /><br />Some RSS software suggests websites that you might like to follow - although generally I've found that the suggestions are pretty broad and not overly useful.<br /><br />So -  how else can you find new blogs to read? <br /><br /><br /><h2>How to find other blogs to read</h2><h3>Google's BlogSearch tool, RIP</h3>Google previously gave us a dedicated blog-search tool at <a href="http://www.google.com/blogsearch" target="_blank">www.google.com/blogsearch</a>, which was available from various places, and still comes up in the search results if you google "how to find other blogs"<br /><br />But <a href="http://searchengineland.com/google-blog-search-now-within-google-news-search-202202" target="_blank">apparently</a> this is now re-directing to the Google home page.   And even though I'm seeing that the re-directed URL is https://www.google.com/blogsearch?gws_rd=ssl - the search results that it returns are most definitely not just blogs.)<br /><br />You can still get to it without re-direction at the moment, by going to <a href="https://www.google.com/?tbm=blg" target="_blank">https://www.google.com/?tbm=blg</a>, but the <a href="http://googlesystem.blogspot.ie/2014/09/google-blog-search-redirects-to-google.html" target="_blank">predictions</a> are that this won't work for much longer.<br /><br /><br /><h3>Google News</h3>This tool is available at <a href="https://news.google.com/" target="_blank">https://news.google.com</a><br /><br />It looks like there are a couple of versions available.<br /><br />In the newer one, you can apparently click Search Tools, select the “All news” drop down, and choose “Blogs.<br /><br />In the older one, which I still have, to prioritise blogs in your news-feed you need to:<br /><ul><li>Click on the gear wheel (button with a picture of a cog on it) near the top right of the screeen, </li><li>Click on the Settings link that is to the right of Save, and </li><li>Under Sources set Blogs to More and Press Releases to None</li><li>Click Save Changes.</li></ul><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5nNBqsfZ6IsotjnzHxtJ9mxTWPHMBLYexQO7tGbVUNZfKipXEg8WcMALdO4IqIJmQAyDj3LsaENPAR45GFSnq3nS74wUMwcltXpGFZAEiN8bsOrtt8rdmg4TkelNyLDQCy5Ocra9uiG3w/w641-h514-no/google-news-sources-priority-definition-selection-tab.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5nNBqsfZ6IsotjnzHxtJ9mxTWPHMBLYexQO7tGbVUNZfKipXEg8WcMALdO4IqIJmQAyDj3LsaENPAR45GFSnq3nS74wUMwcltXpGFZAEiN8bsOrtt8rdmg4TkelNyLDQCy5Ocra9uiG3w/w641-h514-no/google-news-sources-priority-definition-selection-tab.png" width="90%" /></a></div><br /><br />At the moment, the News content from blogs isn't the best - but indications from Google are that it will get better as news-bloggers register their sites.<br /><br /><h3>Search</h3>Old-fashioned searching is probably one of the most powerful way of finding blogs.  To use Search to find other blogs:<br /><ul><li>If you follow a topic, then you should regularly search in Google for interesting questions in your niche, but not choose the most-obvious results from the results page. Instead choose the ones you haven't heard of, but which look promising.</li></ul><ul><li>Use a different search engine - either a mainstream one like www.bing.com or www.yahoo.com, or a more specialist custom search in your niche.</li></ul><ul><li>Include the word "blog" when you are searching. (This returns websites that use the word "blog" as well as blogs, so isn't perfect. But it sometimes helps to turn up new sources.)</li></ul><ul><li>Search for interesting key words together with the phrase "site:blogspot.com". Now, this will only give you sites that don't have custom domains - but some of them are g<a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2012/11/use-blogger-to-make-a-website.html">reat blogs</a>.</li></ul><br /><h3>Browse</h3>One of the most important ways of finding sites is by - finding sites.    Be curious with everything you read:  ask who wrote it, who else they follow, and what they are telling you about where they got their information.<br /><br />Visit their sites, instead of just reading their blog posts in your RSS subscription tool, and look at their blogrolls and lists of interesting sites, and see if there are any you don't know about.<br /><br />Follow links in their posts, and assess if they are pointing to blogs that you should be reading.<br /><br />Look at their Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites:   she who they follow or interact with - and then check if those people have blogs.<br /><br /><br /><h3>Ask</h3>This may seem strange but simply asking your readers for suggestions can unearth some blogs that you won't find any other way.     Of course it won't work if you ask on your blog and don't have many regular readers yet - but you have nothing to lose. <br /><br />But there's no reason why you cannot ask in other mediums - eg by leaving a question on your Facebook page or the page of anyone else who might know (and will let you write there0<br /><br />Similarly you could post a question on Twitter, and a time when people with lots of knowledge about blogs in your niche are likely to be posting.<br /><br /><br /><h3>Use Blogger's Profile linking service</h3>This approach was first <a href="http://buzz.blogger.com/2007/08/browse-profiles-find-new-blogs-to-read.html" target="_blank">described</a> in 2007 - which seems like eons ago.   And today won't work for bloggers who have a Google+ profile.  But it might work still for new bloggers, in particular.<br /><br /><br /><h3>Look in a Blog Directory</h3>These are also somewhat old-hat, but some blog directories like Alltop and <a href="http://technorati.com/" target="_blank">Technorati</a> are still useful if the topics they feature suit your niche.<br /><br /><br /><br /><h2>How do you keep the list of blogs that you read fresh and up-to-date?</h2><br /><br /><hr /><h2>Related Articles:</h2><a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.ie/2010/08/why-rss-subscribe-to-posts-is-important.html">Understanding RSS</a><br /><br /><a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2012/11/use-blogger-to-make-a-website.html">How to make a real website using Blogger</a>

How to find other blogs to read

This is a quick guide to searching for other blogs to read, now that Google's blog-search tool has been retired . If you write a blog...

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Introducing the "Free high-quality picture search" tool

<b>This article introduces the Free High Quality Picture Search tool which has been added to this website</b><b>.</b><br /><br /><div style="clear: both;"></div><a name="more"></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGvtz8F2SXZ2UeXhI2iRFCWuDROUrPtqX-OgPSLyzinH5JEnI4oLID_2sVGlURBp6RCsUHpW4RAm2u4rjyU7mL9MomEohKnYUIvFOX5t6C_qZfFpzPwDaeWgerBH3xpRF88h2_pdMGd5mc/s720/picture-search-free-images-custom-search-high-quality-graphics.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGvtz8F2SXZ2UeXhI2iRFCWuDROUrPtqX-OgPSLyzinH5JEnI4oLID_2sVGlURBp6RCsUHpW4RAm2u4rjyU7mL9MomEohKnYUIvFOX5t6C_qZfFpzPwDaeWgerBH3xpRF88h2_pdMGd5mc/s720/picture-search-free-images-custom-search-high-quality-graphics.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Today I've added a new feature to <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/">Blogger-Hints-and-Tips</a>.<br /><br />The <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.ie/p/free-image-search.html">Free High Quality Image Search tool</a> is available from the menu bar. It is a tool to help you locate free, high-quality pictures to use in your blog posts or other website projects.<br /><br />It is based on a <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/10/putting-custom-search-engine-in-your.html">Google-custom-search engine</a>, and a carefully selected <a href="http://www.labnol.org/internet/find-free-images/24990/">set of websites</a> that offer images you can use for free on your blog, even if it is "commercial" (ie you have advertising or any other way of making money from it).<br /><div><br />The difference between this and the images that you can get from a general-purpose search using the <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2012/12/find-free-pictures-with-creative-commons-search-tool.html">Creative Commons image and multi-media search tool</a> is the resolution of the images that are found and/or their photographic quality.<br /><br /><h2>How to use the Free-image-search tool</h2><div><ul><li>Choose it from the menu bar on this blog, or navigate directly to it at  <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.ie/p/free-image-search.html">http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.ie/p/free-image-search.html</a></li></ul></div><div><ul><li>Type a description of the image you want to see into the search-bar.</li></ul></div><div><ul><li>Press Enter</li></ul></div><div><ul><li>When the results display, click the Image tab, to see what photos are available.<br /><i>(Hopefully this step is only temporary, and I can soon manage to have the search-results default to images and still use the tool in Blogger.)</i></li></ul></div><div><ul><li>Use the numbers in the lower-left side to move to different pages in the image-search results.</li></ul><ul><li>Choose an image that you would like to use.</li></ul></div><div><br /></div><div>Once you have chosen an image, you can either link directly to if (if the site allows), or download a copy, put it on your own image-service (eg Picasa-web-albums), and use it in your blog.   The latter approach is required if you want the image to be used as the <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2011/07/postsnippet-and-postthumbnail-tools-for.html">thumbnail for your post</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><h2>Copyright</h2><div>By definition, all images returned by the search-tool should be free-use and so not subject to any <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/10/copyright-blogs-and-bloggers.html">copyright rules</a>. <br /><br />However some do have attribution requirements, and you may need to use image-captions or similar to make sure that these are followed in your blog.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><h2></h2><h2>Related Articles:</h2><a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2012/12/find-free-pictures-with-creative-commons-search-tool.html">Finding free photos for your blog, using Creative Commons</a><br /><br /><a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/10/putting-custom-search-engine-in-your.html">Introducing Google-custom-search engines</a><br /><br /><a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2011/07/postsnippet-and-postthumbnail-tools-for.html">Summarise your blog-post with post.snippet and post.thumbnail</a><br /><br /><a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/10/copyright-blogs-and-bloggers.html">Copyright, Blogs and Blogging, an introduction</a></div>

Introducing the "Free high-quality picture search" tool

This article introduces the Free High Quality Picture Search tool which has been added to this website . Today I've added a new feature ...

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Dealing with the "Keyword not provided" problem in your statistics

<b>This article explains why the proportion of "keyword not provided" visits to most websites is increasing, and gives you options for finding out what keywords people are searching for when they reach your blog.</b><br /><br /><br /><br /><div style="clear: both;"></div><a name="more"></a><h2>Why the percentage of not-provided search visits to your blog has increased</h2><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglrLh6y9PThg731zxGC8lVjcZjQUf0gR3D7Fyl7e5shGPfSiacDn269dhKEjTuyFNaf3eNnDIigJhbf4GKOSoPRZ6XEZcLNO0Fh9bmWFn_axT7uJgpD0iUhw8bYhhGi2SGcbxCgpesDyiv/s640/bh-notProv-wRnd-757495.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglrLh6y9PThg731zxGC8lVjcZjQUf0gR3D7Fyl7e5shGPfSiacDn269dhKEjTuyFNaf3eNnDIigJhbf4GKOSoPRZ6XEZcLNO0Fh9bmWFn_axT7uJgpD0iUhw8bYhhGi2SGcbxCgpesDyiv/s320/bh-notProv-wRnd-757495.jpg" width="280" /></a></div>If <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2012/08/seo-is-irrelevant-for-some-blogs-because.html">SEO is important for your blog</a>, and if you therefore watch the Stats > Traffic Sources tab in your Blogger dashboard or your Google Analytics results, you'll probably have seen that proportion of your search-visitors whose keyword is "not provided" has gone up a lot recently, to be more-or-less 100% of your Google search traffic.   (In the Blogger Stats tab "not provided" isn't shown - but the number of visits per keyword is now massively less than the vists from Google.)<br /><br />This is no accident: Google is now witholding the keywords that people use, and (says that) this to protect your visitor's privacy. The issue has been widely discussed in sites like <a href="http://searchengineland.com/googles-plan-to-withhold-search-data-create-new-advertisers-171205" target="_blank">SearchEngineLand</a>.<br /><br />Opinions vary, but many people believe that<br /><blockquote>"<b>Not knowing keywords has big implications if you use data about what people search for to decide how to develop your blog.</b>" <a href="http://twitter.com/home/?status=Not knowing keywords has big implications if you use data about what people search for to decide how to develop your blog. via@BloggerHAT" target="_blank"> [tweet this quote].</a></blockquote><br />For example,   I publish listings of the contents of old (ie graphical copyright expired) song-books in a particular niche on one of my blogs.  There are far too many songs for me to load the full text or sheet music of all of them. And this is a niche with lots of competition:   there are a zillion websites distributing song-lyrics (most illegally).  But by watching the search-terms that led people to arrive at certain pages, I can identify particular songs that people were looking for and not finding anywhere else (the so called "long tail" of search keywords). If these songs are now in the public domain, I can make a dedicated page for them, and share what I know - in many cases after doing more research and pulling together information from a range of different sources.    Not knowing the keywords that people use to get to the book-listing pages would totally destroy this approach.<br /><br /><br /><h2>What you can do about it</h2>So far I've identified three alternative options for getting data about what my visitors are searching for.<br /><br /><h3>Ask for user-provided information</h3>I've <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2013/09/use-google-forms-to-make-a-poll-survey-questionnaire.html">used Google Docs to make a data-collection form</a>, and invited my visitors to use it to tell me about songs they are looking for.<br /><br />The advantage is that I can ask them for richer information than just the keywords, eg where / when they remembmer it from, multiple snatches of the lyrics, what style the music is, etc.<br /><br />But the disadvantage - and it's a big one - is that it only works for people who actually get to my site and then go into the other page where this form is kept, and fill in the form. I don't want to go into details - but let's just say that I haven't been run off my feet!<br /><br /><br /><h3>Get data from WebMaster Central</h3>If you have verified your blog in Google <a href="https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools" target="_blank">Webmaster Tools</a>, then the <b>Search traffic > Search Queries</b> tab shows the queries that have caused your blog to show up in search results pages, as well as how many times this has happened and what position, on average, you had in these pages.<br /><br />This is richer information than you get from Analytics or Blogger-Stats, which only tell you about people who actually visited your blog.<br /><br />But the disadvantages are that data is only kept for 90 days, and it only shows the top 2000 keywords.   Both of these are issues for me - some of my song-book contents are seasonal - if something is being looked for now, then the moment (week, month) may have passed by the time that I've noticed the trend, researched the song and written it up to a standard that I'm happy to publish. So really I want to checking the logs for nine months ago, so I can research things that are likely to be popular again next year.<br /><br /><br /><h3>Get data from AdWords</h3>Advertising campaigns are the one place where Google is passing the search-keywords through to back-end systems. And because of this, Adwords does have data about what your visitors are searching for - provided you've set it up to collect this data. To get it up:<br /><br />Firstly, <b>sign</b> up for an AdWords account. You probably have to deposit $10 into the account to get started - but you don't actually need to set up any advertising campaigns or spend any money after that.<br /><br />Then <b>link </b>your AdWords account to your Google Webmaster Central account.<br /><br />Once this is done, Adwords will start collecting the search-keywords for your blog. To get at the data:<br /><ul><li>Log in to AdWords</li><li>Select "All Online Campaigns,"</li><li>Make an empty campaign (if you haven't got one already)</li><li>Go to the "Dimensions" tab</li><li>Change "View" to "Paid & organic".</li></ul><br />AdWords will display your stats, since you signed up and linked your account. This includes the top search terms that users got to your site with, number of clicks, number of queries and some other measures too.<br /><br />I'm only just starting to assess how well this will for for my song-listing site - will update this post when I have more specific information about how well it works and whether I can get actionable results from it.<br /><br /><br /><h3>What other alternatives have you found?</h3>Leave a comment below, and I'll expand this list as we find out more options for accessing keyword-based search traffic information.<br /><br /><br /><br /><hr /><h2>Related Articles:</h2><a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2013/09/use-google-forms-to-make-a-poll-survey-questionnaire.html">Using Google Docs to put a survey questionnaire into Blogger</a><br /><br /><a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2012/08/seo-is-irrelevant-for-some-blogs-because.html">Six reasons why SEO doesn't matter for your blog</a>

Dealing with the "Keyword not provided" problem in your statistics

This article explains why the proportion of "keyword not provided" visits to most websites is increasing, and gives you options fo...

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How to find free pictures for your blog, using Creative-Commons search

<b>This article describes the Creative Commons search tool, which you can use to look for pictures, videos, music etc that are available for other people to use under a Creative Commons license.</b><br /><br /><div style="clear: both;"></div><br /><a name="more"></a><h2>What is Creative Commons</h2><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfQtsZ6rxyL9DpxYOxc1RYeqR8vCaLUqQw4s60jb5fSKtA5CWeDBuRb8ohK2Nna0IW8q165Xtht7BLL1K_cW2BurlapQgetHqxmNfeHRUaLDuEOkt4zyZBbPkUwktqIUJfsmLRuw-9K_Vr/s356/find-free-pictures-for-your-blog-with-creative-commons-search-tool.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Stick-man holding up a Creative-Commons-search logo, while thinking about some images he wants to find" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfQtsZ6rxyL9DpxYOxc1RYeqR8vCaLUqQw4s60jb5fSKtA5CWeDBuRb8ohK2Nna0IW8q165Xtht7BLL1K_cW2BurlapQgetHqxmNfeHRUaLDuEOkt4zyZBbPkUwktqIUJfsmLRuw-9K_Vr/s320/find-free-pictures-for-your-blog-with-creative-commons-search-tool.png" title="Blogger-HAT-Man recommends Creative Commons search to find interesting pictures to use on your blog" width="250" /></a></div>Previously I've described <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/10/copyright-blogs-and-bloggers.html">how copyright applies to bloggers</a>, <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/10/tools-for-applying-copyright-protection.html">how you can protect your blog-content from copyright theives</a>, and <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/10/taking-action-when-someone-has-copied.html">what you can do if they take you work anyway</a>.<br /><br />The focus in that series was looking after your own rights.<br /><br />But rights always come with responsibilities. The details vary by country, but in general you cannot just copy other people's recent work without their permission - in the same way that they cannot copy yours.<br /><br />Some people, though, are <b>happy to give other people permission to use their work</b>, often with certain conditions (eg you must including an attribution link to the creator).<br /><br /><b>Creative Commons</b> is an easy, legal way for creators to give permission for things they create to be used by other people. It is a framework which offers "licenses" that creators (writers, artists, composers, poets, etc) can apply to their work to say that other people can make copies, and what conditions apply  (eg non-commercial use, only if you attribute me, etc)<br /><br />To use it, authors, artists, etc don't need to register their work. Instead, they go to <a href="http://creativecommons.org/" target="_blank">the Creative Commons website</a> and get code / text to put with their published work to show what rules apply.<br /><br />Then they can publish or upload their pictures, writing etc anywhere they want, and by linking to the licence <b>the work is as protected as anything on the internet can be</b>.<br /><br /><br /><h2>How to find pictures & music that are Creative Commons licensed</h2>Creative Commons have a very useful search tool, found at <a href="http://search.creativecommons.org/" target="_blank">http://search.creativecommons.org</a><br /><br />This is not a search <b>engine</b>. Instead it is a <b>front-end-tool</b> that lets you choose:<br /><ul><li>The <b>keywords</b> you want to search for (the search words)</li><li>The <b>type of license</b> that you need (use for commercial purposes - yes or no, modify, adapt, build upon - yes/no)</li><li>Which of the file host/search services to use (eg flickr, Google, Open clip art library - etc)</li></ul><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIRIz1Bfgf4QL98winooALXIyYJ50myVZzZ1yt-yRrVkTNjsuw2tW_4_cUHKsSvDZ3IWZjeGQRIMYpx-GkIctxoKt64wYuDcXa1x8cy6FwJYa3fS5jDZLudG23zL191Ev4c0Fjp0Ue1gE-/s640/creative-commons-search-main-options-menu-specify-keywords-modifiable-attribution.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="screen where you can enter creative commons search parameter values " border="0" height="450" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIRIz1Bfgf4QL98winooALXIyYJ50myVZzZ1yt-yRrVkTNjsuw2tW_4_cUHKsSvDZ3IWZjeGQRIMYpx-GkIctxoKt64wYuDcXa1x8cy6FwJYa3fS5jDZLudG23zL191Ev4c0Fjp0Ue1gE-/s640/creative-commons-search-main-options-menu-specify-keywords-modifiable-attribution.png" title="Creative Commons search tool home page" width="640" /></a></div><br /><br />Once you have entered the search options, click on the source that you want to look in, and <b>you are  taken to that site</b> and shown the results of the search-query and options you entered.<br /><br />For example, when I entered:<br /><ul><li>"Christmas"</li><li>Commercial allowed (because I wanted to make <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/01/inserting-picture-into-blog-post.html">a picture to use</a> in <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/">Blogger-HAT</a>, where I have advertising)</li><li>Changes allowed (because I wanted an image that I could use as the basis for another one, rather than exactly as it is now)</li></ul><br />and clicked on Fotopedia, I was shown:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_Pxni-EFr_dvzwTSWCgkx_Ewat4CbB3YXTb6o6eR_vsuXyQdUL5V4popuQopSvt9fnblWBT3kCnexcuSuvkGN__b53NcEcnXfCs2DBkSKXWFwoSTbjh2AKRDwk5SlrCTbU4HowppbDwTu/s545/fotopedia-search-results-set-commercial-labelled-reuse-attribution.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="screen showing three Christmas-themes photos from Fotopedia, and their tools for changing pictures per screen and re-use options" border="0" height="330" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_Pxni-EFr_dvzwTSWCgkx_Ewat4CbB3YXTb6o6eR_vsuXyQdUL5V4popuQopSvt9fnblWBT3kCnexcuSuvkGN__b53NcEcnXfCs2DBkSKXWFwoSTbjh2AKRDwk5SlrCTbU4HowppbDwTu/s640/fotopedia-search-results-set-commercial-labelled-reuse-attribution.png" title="Fotopedia search results set for Christmas with commercial use and modifications allowed" width="640" /></a></div><br /><br />From here I could use the search tools in Fotopedia to refine my image-search and find just the right picture that I could use to represent a Christmas carol worksheet on my blog.<br /><br /><br /><h2>What sources are included</h2>Today, the sources that are linked to from Creative Commons search are:<br /><ul><li>Eurpoeana - media</li><li>Flickr - pictures</li><li>Fotopedia - pictures</li><li>Google web - web search results</li><li>Google images - pictures</li><li>Jamenda - music</li><li>Open Clip Art Library - images</li><li>SpinXpress - media</li><li>Wikimedia Commons - media</li><li>YouTube - video</li><li>Pixabay - images</li><li>ccMixter - music</li><li>SoundCloud - music</li></ul><br /><br />It wouldn't surprise me if this list grow/shrinks, as sites become more or less useful as sources of public-domain or creative-commons-licensed materials.<br /><br /><br /><h2>Things to watch out for</h2>Creative Commons cannot guarantee that the results of searches that start in their tools will always be available for re-use: source systems may change their approach, items may be mis-tagged, content owners may change their mind, etc. So they recommend that you should a<b>lways click-through to the original image in the source site, and double-check the license and attribution requirements</b> there.<br /><br />Also, some sites may allow you to link directly to the copy of the image on their site. this can be a lot quicker than making your own copy, uploading it and included it in your blog.  But doing this means that the image will not be used as <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2011/07/postsnippet-and-postthumbnail-tools-for.html">the thumbnail-image for your post</a>. And if the picture is ever removed from the original site - or its web-site address there changes - then the link in your blog will not work any more.<br /><br /><br /><br /><hr /><h2>Related Articles:</h2><a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/10/copyright-blogs-and-bloggers.html">Bloggers and Copyright - an overview</a><br /><br /><a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/10/tools-for-applying-copyright-protection.html">Protecting your blog-contents from copyright theft</a><br /><br /><a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/10/taking-action-when-someone-has-copied.html">Taking action when someone has used your copyright materials</a><br /><br /><a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2011/07/postsnippet-and-postthumbnail-tools-for.html">Thumbnail images - a picture to summarise each post</a><br /><br /><a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/01/inserting-picture-into-blog-post.html">Adding a picture to Blogger</a>

How to find free pictures for your blog, using Creative-Commons search

This article describes the Creative Commons search tool, which you can use to look for pictures, videos, music etc that are available for ot...

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