Another blog or Google Site is already using this address

February 15, 2012 -- Sometimes the straight-forward things in life become objects of true frustration. Case in point. I will walk you through my real life example.

Situation:

I recently created a new Google Blog at soundclassroom.blogspot.com for one of my clients. This was easy enough. I have done this type of thing several times before. My client already owned an existing Domain Name soundclassroom.com that was being forwarded to another pre-existing website that I wanted to change to point to the new blog. This shouldn't be a problem. Since the domain name was managed with GoDaddy.com, there was also an easy setup button in Google Blogger to do this for me. Essentially one click and new DNS records were added for soundclassroom.com to point back to Google. The nice thing about GoDaddy is that DNS changes typically happen within the hour in my experience and often within minutes. You can verify that the DNS has propogated by simply pinging your domain to confirm that is directing to Google's IP addresses.

Following the blog setup instructions for redirecting my blog to an existing domain, I went to Settings: Basic: Blog Address: Advanced settings and entered www.soundclassroom.com followed by Save. The error returned was Another blog or Google Site is already using this address. The recommended resolution is to wait a day or two and go back to your domain registrar to resolve any DNS settings issue. This didn't make much sense as Google had done the update for me. I thought perhaps it took a while for Google to update their database, so I waited, and waited, and waited. Each time I tried to redirect my blog to my custom domain I got the same error. When I tried to go to www.soundclassrom.com or soundclassroom.com in my browser I was taken to a Google Apps landing page for Soundclassroom.com. This was getting frustrating and going nowhere fast.

At some point I ended up at the Google Apps login page [https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/soundclassroom.com] ... mmm ... I didn't have a Google Apps login for this domain. Now what?

I clicked on the Can't access your account link and was advised that password reset instructions would be sent to an email account at some New Zealand domain. Now I started to understand what was happening. This wasn't going to be a solution. Fortunately I was offered the opportunity to confirm ownership of the domain by adding a CNAME record to the DNS zone account.

This was an easy step with GoDaddy.com, my domain registrar. Again, within a few minutes this was already active. Once I confirmed this, I received an email from Google (2 hours later) with instructions and a link to reset the Google Apps administrator password for my domain. Remember ... I had never set this up myself as the domain name was new to me. But now I could start to piece the puzzle together.

As the story might have been told ...

John in NZ purchased a domain called soundclassroom.com a couple years ago. He also created a Google blog which redirected to his domain. He also created a Google Apps account -- this actually happens automatically if you purchase your domain through Google and the Blogger interface. Sometime later, John abandoned his blog and website, and his domain expired. Then I come along a year later and purchased the now expired domain name; created a new blog; and tried to redirect the blog to the domain. Resulting error: Another blog or Google Site is already using this address. Clearly, Google's database was still remembering the link that John had established.

Almost there ...

With the Google reset instructions, I was able to gain control of the Google Apps account for John in NZ ... read his email from a year ago (nothing interesting there) ... and looked for a way to disconnect my domain soundclassroom.com from his Google Apps account. If you have spent any time in the Google Apps control panel, you must have experienced the feeling of going around in circles. Me too. My thought was that I should find a way to DELETE the Google Apps account. I will tell you now: Do not delete your Google Apps account. It is possible that this may only hinder the resolution.

The first thing I did when I got logged into John's Administrator account, was to add my personal email address as a secondary address for password resets just in case things went wrong. I'll give you the short version of going in circles. Basically you will want to disable or uninstall services that are enabled within the Google Apps account. In my situation I found that Sites was referencing my domain name. Once I removed that, I was able to go back to Blogger and redirect my blog to my custom domain. The effect was immediate.

Perhaps an easier solution ...

Believing that most problems have a logical solution (okay ... perhaps not logical, but at least fixable), I searched the Google Blogger forums. I simply searched for the entire error message. I discovered in this case, that I was not alone with this dilemma, and nor is this problem a recent one. In fact given the millions or 100's of millions of websites, domains, and blogs, the problem will likely just get worse. Towards the end of my resolution I did find a detailed explaination of steps to take to resolve the problem at hand. Visit The Real Blooger Status blog to read his 2007 article titled Another blog or Google Site is already using this address.

Summary:

It doesn't make sense that Google would walk you through the steps to create a new blog; register a new domain or configure an existing one; but then fall down when you try to link your properly configured blog with your properly configured domain that apparently belonged to someone else in the past. There should be an easier way out of this and Google should have made it obvious.

Okay ... there may be an another way -- not so much a solution but a resolution for your one situation. As I discovered after the fact, you can try using the Magical Custom Domain Form. This form is specifically there to address the "Another blog is already hosted at this address" error. Simply submit the URL (domain name) that needs clearing, and a real person will try to have it ready for use within 48 hours or a few days maybe. Your results may vary. I would have liked to have seen this link when I got my first error.

I just marvel some days at the things I (have to) learn, and hope that I can make use of this knowledge again to make all this grief worthwhile :)

-- MLJ