Show off your favorite blogs with a Blog List

Today we’re releasing a new page element for Layouts blogs: Blog List. The Blog List improves on our Link List page element by using blogs’ RSS and Atom feeds to show update times, post titles, and snippets.

Use a Blog List to put a blogroll in your sidebar, or make a few to categorize the blogs you read. The Blog List works well for any page that has an RSS or Atom feed, so you can get creative: link to news sites, podcasts, Twitter streams, search results, or anything else with a feed.

Here’s a quick summary of the features that a Blog List gives you:

• Link to blogs, web pages, and feeds from your blog’s sidebar, with an optional favicon
• For pages with RSS and Atom feeds, Blog List can show last updated time, post title, and a snippet of the latest post
• Sort links alphabetically or by last update time
• Show all links, or hide some behind a “show all” link
• Import subscriptions from Google Reader
• Blog List links are visible to search engine crawlers, so your blog’s PageRank and reputation flow to those you link to

Want to see it in action? We made a help video to walk you through adding and configuring a Blog List:

Thanks go out to everyone who chimed in on the Blogger in draft blog while this feature was being developed. You helped us a lot!

Tip: Want to show more posts from a single blog? Use the Feed page element to put any RSS or Atom feed in your blog’s sidebar.