Why I Won't Be Using SMF for My Next Site

Started by s7uar7, December 09, 2006, 09:15:55 AM

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s7uar7

I've installed SMF on two websites and love it: easy to install, easy to use and  easy to customise, but I won't be using it on my next site.  The reason?  One word -  Google.  Despite what the 'Heroes' may say, SMF is NOT Google friendly.  Even with SEO URLs and various mods to remove SIDs, for some reason Google doesn't like SMF forums, and when Google has such dominance over the SE market, that's a big problem.  It will crawl it, but it will only index the index.php.  Please don't tell me 'yes, but simplemachines.org is indexed' - every SMF site installed links to it so it's got a high PR, but for normal, everyday sites it's just impossible.

I first started using SMF about a year ago, but stuck with it despite the Google problem because I thought it would be seriously looked at.  I was wrong.  SMF has the potential to be the #1 choice for forum software, paid or free, but for as long as the people looking after it are in denial about the Google problem it's destined to stay on the sidelines.

Harzem

#1
1.1 final is quite more google friendly. A simple modification made it much better. Try and see.

This problem:
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=112100.msg729254#msg729254
has been fixed in 1.1 final.

Daniel15

Well, literally nobody links to my site (apart from me in my signatures, but a lot of forums have rel="nofollow" on signature links), and the posts are still listed in Google: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&client=opera&rls=en&hs=xsN&q=site%3Adaniel15.com%2Fforum%2F&btnG=Search
It doesn't rate as highly as my blog, but the pages are definately there.

I'm not sure if SMF 1.1 is more Google-friendly, but I hope so :D
Daniel15, former Customisation team member, resigned due to lack of time. I still love everyone here :D.
Go to smfshop.com for SMFshop support, do NOT email or PM me!

Elmacik

#3
Very interesting to see Google directing all the "so called" web sites.
Men, simplemachines is index not only because of high PR.
My site is only ranked 2 but its highly indexed. I havent done even one modification or even a little change for friendship with Google. And there arent big sites linking to me.
But look at results to see how many pages of my site are indexed by Google:
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aelmacik.com

This is even 1.1 RC2. And 1.1 final is better for search engines.
Home of Elmacik

KGIII

I'm not sure what I'm doing that is any different than anything anyone else does? This is my own personal forum for the G³ Solutions site:

http://www.iwebtool.com/forum.kgiii.info

PR4, never edited much for SEO or the likes.

Small forum - completely and totally erased at one point not even very long ago - and yet still has a PR4 after three months or so of no content. Google gives it 714 links worth. No SEO mods or anything installed or the likes. It was erased, left empty for a few months, and hasn't even been back online for more than a couple of months as far as I know. The only changes are that I'd edited the meta tags but, honestly, those don't count for much with the PageRank algorithm as near as I can tell.

I try not to be a zealot about anything but, having used multiple forums over the years, I can't see any difference in the results.

My PC Support Forum
Please ask in-thread before PMing
                   SMF Help
                   Visit My Blog

How can we improve the support process?:
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=163533.0

SMF vs. Godzilla? Who do you think will win?

青山 素子

Popping in with a link to one of the forums I run. We are not using friendly URLs (the host isn't set up to allow that).

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aforum.staticsubs.org

The site was at about 95 pages indexed earlier this week as I only had about 4 boards set as guest visible. I upgraded to 1.1 final and opened more boards to guest view, and now Google reports about 414 indexed pages (not a bad jump for under a week). I fully expect more pages will show up as Google adds them to its index.
Motoko-chan
Director, Simple Machines

Note: Unless otherwise stated, my posts are not representative of any official position or opinion of Simple Machines.


Elmacik

I have 205 messages in 75 topics; and 550 indexed pages in Google.
This is very clear :)
Home of Elmacik

SaltedWeb

Our site has rated number 1 out of 500 similar names on Google, and even better response on Yahoo.
we use rc2 untill all 1.1 issues are addessed so were still on the old system no problems on searches.


Cozmo
Knowing your limitations makes you human, exceeding these limitations makes you worthy of being human.

青山 素子

I think it all comes down to a set of factors, and it just happens some of the people using SMF have these factors in common.

With my site, we are actually competing against our old site (usually #1 on searches for the name). With the combination of moving to 1.1 final, adding more content to be indexed, and getting similar sites to link to our new site, things seem to be improving.

Also remember that Google is a moving target. They update their search algorithms somewhat often, and have in the past, dropped huge numbers of pages from their indexes. Moving to a different system might just gain pages in the index because they are new to the crawler, not because that software is necessarily better.

We do appreciate feedback on how ranking is doing, and also any techniques that appear to help (Ben's test of some things have directly benefited the 1.1 final release).
Motoko-chan
Director, Simple Machines

Note: Unless otherwise stated, my posts are not representative of any official position or opinion of Simple Machines.


Dannii

If s7uar7 was interested, we could try to help their forum be ranked better. I'm suprised at how many people complain about their rankings, but have made no effort to optimise their forum and robots.txt and whatever else for search engines.
"Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise."

JoeLansing

My forum is less than a month old and still small.  Running RC3..  I have almost as many results in Google as I do posts on my forum..:)   I'm a n00b, but I ran something called GsiteCrawler?:

http://gsitecrawler.com [nofollow]

It made a sitemap, and then I sent it to Google:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?topic=8476 [nofollow]  and that's it.

Like I said, I'm new.  Maybe one result per post is normal for a SMF forum?.  Or maybe I did something right for a change?   It will be nice if I don't have to do all the crazy sitemap things with 1.1, but I won't upgrade till Dilber MC and Google Member Maps are released for 1.1  -  Joe  www.filipino-michigan.com 


Shipley

I get hits incoming from google searches all the time on the forum. 

青山 素子

Sitemaps aren't required for inclusion in Google search results, but they do help the crawlers index the site.
Motoko-chan
Director, Simple Machines

Note: Unless otherwise stated, my posts are not representative of any official position or opinion of Simple Machines.


Niteblade

xml-sitemaps.com also makes a nice .xml generator ... for those sites that don't generate their own sitemap.

however, i still use http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=59676.0 even with v1.1 it works just fine --> http://forum.midessa.net/sitemaps.php ... also, this generates http://forum.midessa.net/sitemaps/ ...

affiliate blog

青山 素子

Quote from: Motoko-chan on December 09, 2006, 12:45:05 PM
Popping in with a link to one of the forums I run. We are not using friendly URLs (the host isn't set up to allow that).

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aforum.staticsubs.org

The site was at about 95 pages indexed earlier this week as I only had about 4 boards set as guest visible. I upgraded to 1.1 final and opened more boards to guest view, and now Google reports about 414 indexed pages (not a bad jump for under a week). I fully expect more pages will show up as Google adds them to its index.

As an update to my previous post, Google now reports 600 pages as being indexed. 186 pages added in two days, not bad. (With almost 1000 topics on the board itself, I'm almost fully indexed.)
Motoko-chan
Director, Simple Machines

Note: Unless otherwise stated, my posts are not representative of any official position or opinion of Simple Machines.



青山 素子

Quote from: Motoko-chan on December 11, 2006, 10:57:25 AM
Quote from: Motoko-chan on December 09, 2006, 12:45:05 PM
Popping in with a link to one of the forums I run. We are not using friendly URLs (the host isn't set up to allow that).

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aforum.staticsubs.org

The site was at about 95 pages indexed earlier this week as I only had about 4 boards set as guest visible. I upgraded to 1.1 final and opened more boards to guest view, and now Google reports about 414 indexed pages (not a bad jump for under a week). I fully expect more pages will show up as Google adds them to its index.

As an update to my previous post, Google now reports 600 pages as being indexed. 186 pages added in two days, not bad. (With almost 1000 topics on the board itself, I'm almost fully indexed.)

Another update for those who are interested. Google now reports 681 pages indexed for my SMF site. 81 new pages in a day, not bad. I think these updates will definitely show that indexing is indeed working fine on 1.1 final (and not even using friendly URLs!).
Motoko-chan
Director, Simple Machines

Note: Unless otherwise stated, my posts are not representative of any official position or opinion of Simple Machines.


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