Simple Machines Community Forum

Archived Boards and Threads... => Archived Boards => SMF Feedback and Discussion => Topic started by: meko me on September 24, 2009, 09:58:28 AM

Title: google not indexing my forum
Post by: meko me on September 24, 2009, 09:58:28 AM
hello i have submitted by sitemap to google but it has crawled only 5 links out of 6,048 url's please kindly help me  :(

Title: Re: google not indexing my forum
Post by: Arantor on September 24, 2009, 10:03:13 AM
Crawling isn't the same as indexing.

You've submitted 6,000 URLs to Google, but that's no guarantee of Google crawling or indexing them. They've indexed 5 - that's 5 actually in the search index. There is no count how many Google has actually saved to its network though.

Is guest access allowed to the forum?
Title: Re: google not indexing my forum
Post by: meko me on September 24, 2009, 02:04:20 PM
yes guests are allowed to view our forum :)

and our forum is 1.5 years old :) we have 9000 members now :)
Title: Re: google not indexing my forum
Post by: Arantor on September 24, 2009, 04:21:17 PM
So what URLs has it done then?
Title: Re: google not indexing my forum
Post by: 青山 素子 on September 24, 2009, 11:57:24 PM
How long have you had SMF running? Did you do a conversion recently? Major changes tend to "spook" Google and it will back off from indexing for a while.
Title: Re: google not indexing my forum
Post by: meko me on September 25, 2009, 01:25:13 PM
Quote from: Motoko-chan on September 24, 2009, 11:57:24 PM
How long have you had SMF running? Did you do a conversion recently? Major changes tend to "spook" Google and it will back off from indexing for a while.

1.5 years
no conversion
and no major changes no seo mod insatalled  :'(
a have a simple forum with sitemap  :(
Title: Re: google not indexing my forum
Post by: 青山 素子 on September 25, 2009, 01:28:59 PM
If you don't have much activity and you aren't linked from many places, then you aren't important enough for Google to give you a deep indexing. If you have a lot of activity, but still aren't linked from many places, then you are probably still considered enough of your own island that you aren't going to get much deep indexing.

Have you checked with Google's webmaster tools to make sure you aren't accidentally blocking their indexer?
Title: Re: google not indexing my forum
Post by: meko me on September 26, 2009, 10:03:17 PM
yes everything is fine in webmastertools

btw my site is in top 1.5lakh alexa ranking

and i have more than 80,000 pagesviews daily (minimum)

BTW there is 1 question i want to ask u.if u install a VB and smf @ same time and after sometime u'll see that google is indexing each and every thread posted on a VB forum and index few imp topics from smf why is that ?please kindly explain this to me :) if u don't trust me then u can test this ur self :)
Title: Re: google not indexing my forum
Post by: sshahnawaz on September 27, 2009, 04:27:40 AM
I think this relates to Google's policies, not because of SMF. SMF has its own importance and search engines do take time to index. When did you submit your sitemap to Google?  :)
Title: Re: google not indexing my forum
Post by: NaYa on September 27, 2009, 12:12:38 PM
Bro SMF is doing well .

But Google is deciding what to do ,in their cases .

can u kindly giv a like to ur site ??

and also i am sure,use PRETTY URLS to get more traffic ,

try this querry ,http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=bsnl-3g-hack&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=
the second result is from me .(as per time)


and also u need to do some SEO works to improve ur forums visibility on search engines ,use mods that realted to twitter,dig,buzz up etc..

install smf on the root instead of any other dir's .

which type of site u have ??
Title: Re: google not indexing my forum
Post by: meko me on September 28, 2009, 09:56:24 AM
i was expecting reply frm smf devs on this issue !

Quote from: NaYa on September 27, 2009, 12:12:38 PM
Bro SMF is doing well .

But Google is deciding what to do ,in their cases .

can u kindly giv a like to ur site ??

and also i am sure,use PRETTY URLS to get more traffic ,

try this querry ,http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=bsnl-3g-hack&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=
the second result is from me .(as per time)


and also u need to do some SEO works to improve ur forums visibility on search engines ,use mods that realted to twitter,dig,buzz up etc..

install smf on the root instead of any other dir's .

which type of site u have ??

@ naya i'm using smf from abt 1.5 years and u thing i hav'nt tried all those things huh ?
Title: Re: google not indexing my forum
Post by: sshahnawaz on September 29, 2009, 02:16:56 AM
I don't think you have tried SEO yet.... because SEO seems to be the solution of every problem related to  Search Engine Indexing etc., many people are using SMF and there is no complain....  :)
Title: Re: google not indexing my forum
Post by: Arantor on September 29, 2009, 03:46:50 AM
Google has said they don't want people rewriting the URLs like Pretty URLs does.
Title: Re: google not indexing my forum
Post by: sshahnawaz on September 29, 2009, 04:28:48 AM
So what will you say about the pretty URLs now??

1) Useless
2) Beneficial to some extent.
3) Wrong for SEO....

This is very important to answer...  :)
Title: Re: google not indexing my forum
Post by: Arantor on September 29, 2009, 04:34:32 AM
It's not useless. It does have uses.

Google simply asks that users don't do it though.
Title: Re: google not indexing my forum
Post by: NaYa on September 29, 2009, 10:26:05 AM
Quote from: Arantor on September 29, 2009, 04:34:32 AM
It's not useless. It does have uses.

Google simply asks that users don't do it though.

It is for their easiness ,not for us.

just make two forums ,one with normal mod other with URL rewriting 

Google will come to the second one .

and also one more thing  ,Google is not only a search engine .


and to meko me  ,

can u plz giv a link to ur forum //**
Title: Re: google not indexing my forum
Post by: Arantor on September 29, 2009, 10:29:00 AM
Actually it helps us too. If you're not rewriting links, you're saving a fair amount EVERY page.
Title: Re: google not indexing my forum
Post by: sshahnawaz on September 29, 2009, 11:03:23 AM
Arantor: I thought my English is just superb, that's why I started answering the questions of people in SMF Help Forum. But you have written a very simple sentence which makes me confused about my opinion that my English is good.
You wrote: If you're not rewriting links, you're saving a fair amount EVERY page.
I don't understand this.... with rewriting URLs what we save? A fair amount of...... ??????  :(
Title: Re: google not indexing my forum
Post by: Arantor on September 29, 2009, 11:27:26 AM
Sorry, I forget some works when I think technical.

If you have a rewriting process involved, such as with Pretty URLs, at some point there has to be an evaluation step from a nice friendly URL like the form that Pretty URLs generates to turn it into a URL that the webserver can directly process. Since this is a process that occurs based off .htaccess files, there is a complex process involved where it scans for multiple .htaccess files in multiple directories, meaning you save a surprising amount of processing time by not having rewritten URLs.

This is Google's concern too.
Title: Re: google not indexing my forum
Post by: NaYa on September 29, 2009, 11:28:35 AM
QuoteYou wrote: If you're not rewriting links, you're saving a fair amount EVERY page.
I don't understand this.... with rewriting URLs what we save? A fair amount of...... ??????  :(

he..he..he..me also..dont take its real meaning ..i just guessed
Title: Re: google not indexing my forum
Post by: 青山 素子 on September 29, 2009, 11:31:09 AM
Quote from: sshahnawaz on September 29, 2009, 02:16:56 AM
I don't think you have tried SEO yet.... because SEO seems to be the solution of every problem related to  Search Engine Indexing etc., many people are using SMF and there is no complain....  :)

This SEO you talk about isn't like some switch you flip, it's a process that is ongoing. SMF also handles search engine indexing quite well. I did a check of several SMF-powered forums I help manage, and all of them had every single one of their public topics indexed. Their size and popularity went between small and obscure to decent size for the niche and well-linked.


Quote from: sshahnawaz on September 29, 2009, 04:28:48 AM
So what will you say about the pretty URLs now??

1) Useless
2) Beneficial to some extent.
3) Wrong for SEO....

This is very important to answer...  :)

Not very useful for search engines. They aren't stupid, they can read dynamic URLs just fine and index the correct pages. The important thing with dynamic URLs is to keep the number of parameters low and restricted to the ones you need for that particular page.

"Friendly" URLs are somewhat useful for humans since it can help with showing them the topic of the page thye will be going to. Given the rather simplistic titles many people use for forum topics, it can be argued that it's not really helpful at all.

Either way, "friendly" URLs have been shown in studies to have no almost effect on ranking position for search results (in one instance, it was found to lower the results rank a little because of over-optimization), meaning that it's one of the last techniques to consider when dealing with search engines.


Quote from: sshahnawaz on September 29, 2009, 11:03:23 AM
I don't understand this.... with rewriting URLs what we save? A fair amount of...... ??????  :(

It's not just searching for other htaccess files (and that does cause a lot of unnecessary disk access), it's also having to manipulate the URL to make it something that the software can use. Remember that every thing you do in code has an impact in requiring more time and power to process. Having to do an extra database query to find the right topic or board just adds more load.


On another note, sshahnawaz, could you please not use an animated signature. It's really distracting when trying to type a response to your posts. I found myself having to look down at my desk when replying because my eyes kept being caught by the flashing.