As you may have noticed, the URL of David's Musings is no longer davidsmusingsthoughts.blogspot.com as it has been for the 4.5 years of the existence of this blog.  So, after this long, why change to a custom URL and domain?  Basically, the old URL had served me well. I've always been the type to not fix something if it wasn't broken.  That is not to imply that the old URL was broken.  I just wanted a change.  I also wanted to shake things up here.  I had been a PR3 for about 4 years.  That changed with another Google Panda update about 4 months ago. David's Musings became a PR2.  As you will notice on the Alexa and Google PR icons, I am not rated on Alexa and my Google PR is 0 as of this post.  I admit, that is another reason I held off on changing to a custom URL and domain.  I expect that to change in a couple of months or so.  Overall, my search on various keywords has not changed.  I had been urged to do this right when I started this blog up in April of 2008.  I probably should have made the switch back then.  I was intimidated about this whole blogging thing back at that time. So, that is another reason I didn't make the switch. 

I don't know if Google gives greater credence to a custom domain and URL.   I've always been told it is better insofar as SEO for your site.  I guess I'm going to find out.  You'll also notice I have a big banner now in place of the text header I have had for the entire existence of David's Musings.  I have just been in a general house cleaning mode lately.  I got rid of a bunch of directory icons I had about 3 months ago also.  It just added a general junky look to the blog.  But, I am excited about this new custom URL/domain.  I own davidsmusings.com now. The domain service is called "enome." If you do a search on "David's Musings," you will see quite a few competitiors.  Right now, this blog is #2 for the search of David's Musings.  I had been #1 for a long, long time.  This actually happened before the change to a custom URL/domain.  So, I'm waiting to see if the Google gods are happy with the changes I have made.