Uh oh

For some, the most urgent information about a new Blogger feature is how to undo it. ¶ 

Clicking the "automatic search links" tool adds multiple hyperlinks to your blog post or page.

The links are to different Google searches. It turns out a lot of people do not like them.

To undo: If you act right away, the undo tool on the toolbar, or the standard undo key commands, will restore the blog post to its status quo ante.

However, close the window, or return to your dashboard, and the change may not be so easily undone.

"Automatically insert Google Search links" is one of two new Blogger features in development that are live for some users. It seems to be causing problems.

Google is introducing these as "beta features," meaning works in progress. Not everyone is seeing them.

In this report I describe how these features are working now, including bugs, and conclude with some of my own thoughts about them.

Automatic hyperlinks

Do you like the idea of providing your readers with links from your blog to Google searches related to phrases in your blog?

If so, you might go for a new tool that creates these links automatically.

The "'pencil' icon" floats on the editing page. (It has nothing to do with pencil of blessed memory.)

Nuisance?

If the most urgent question about this feature is how do I undo it, the second might be how do I make it go away? 

In some layouts the floating pencil overlaps the text field of the editor, obscuring the text and causing accidental clicks on the button.

There isn't a way to disable the presence of this tool, though it sometimes goes away by itself. 

If you are using Blogger in Draft, it is possible that switching to regular Blogger will discourage the tool from bothering you. But right now that does not seem to make any difference.

And for the bugs and requests, now is the time to use Feedback to communicate to the developers about any problems you are having.

Auto search links

The Google searches created by the auto-links feature are sometimes context-specific.

They don't necessarily just link to a search for the highlighted words: the search terms may be derived from those words and the surrounding text.

Unlike tools in the toolbar, clicking the new floating pencil button operates on the entire post.

The links open in a new tab (or window), leaving your blog open in the browser.

Search previews

A second tool adds "search previews"—clickable images from searches—into your post. Google describes this as follows:

The G button is in the toolbar: 

Clicking it calls up a dialog where you can enter search terms. The result is a single image that, when clicked, takes you to the Search page for those search terms.

Unlike automatic hyperlinks, inserting the visual previews operates once in a location that you specify.

Did someone say "popular people"? Note the above is a screen shot, not a live search preview, because this feature is not present for this blog right now. (Copying and pasting one of these breaks it somehow.)

But in the native test blog where I was able to create search previews, I could resize them by selecting and dragging from the sides or corners. 

They aren't regular photos and selecting them does not trigger the pop-up menu to add a caption or alt text. You can align them left or right from the main editing menu, but unlike images this will not cause text to wrap.

Oddly, most searches fail to produce an image. Instead the "preview" displays a generic Search graphic:

You would think Google could provide an image for Tokyo! I could not find a single place that would generate a specific image, "locations" (in "popular people, locations, pop culture" etc.) notwithstanding.

Rollout

The standard for introducing new features in Blogger has long been to make them available only in Blogger in Draft (which is just draft.blogger.com in place of www.blogger.com) at first.

The features get perfected there before adding them to regular Blogger once all the bugs have been worked out.

Google isn't following that protocol this time. I have seen the floating pencil come and go, and had to check through test blogs to find the G button.

Critique

By calling these features "beta," Google signals that these features are not ready for prime time.

So, eventually, the floating pencil might stay out of the way, or become a user preference (present or not).

Eventually, performance of both features may improve. In the meantime, it would be better if the beta stuff were confined to the beta channel.

The random rollout means that some people have a buggy feature they do not want, while those curious about what's coming have no way to kick the tires.

Use case?

More fundamentally, I'd like to know how people might use these. (Please leave comments.)

I do put outbound links in my blogs, and sometimes even link to Search.

I'd even say this is an important part of blogging. But I like to curate what I am linking to.

Meanwhile, the images in the search previews, when present at all, seem dull and generic.

When I think of all the genuinely useful things that Google could add to Blogger, this experiment makes me feel frustrated with the platform. 

At one point, for instance, Google had introduced a table-making tool into the editing menu, only to leave it out of the last revision to the Blogger back end.

Surely this could be buffed up and added back.

There is my own wish list from 2019. And could we get the real pencil tool back, please?

If any of this matters to you, please leave feedback for the developers. It is the only channel we have to communicate with them.

And please post about your own experience in the comments.