Awhile back, with yabbse 1.2 or something, my site was indexed on google. Every page of my forum was listed somewhere and I was getting hits from some decent keywords. I was even ranked second for keyword "gossip problems."
However my site was in frames and I thought if I got rid of the frames then it would work even better for google indexing.
To my dismay, it has been 5 months since I took my site out of frames and just recently google indexed my main forum page but will not look at anythign else.
I remember a thread awhile ago that talked about getting rid of question marks and other characters in the url would in theory index better on google.
Does anyone have a forum out there that is fully indexed on google? Or know how?
oh yeah my site is http://www.webporthole.net/forum/index.php
It will only have indexed as far as the board index, so if you had good titled threads then you might have got a good ranking.
A few months ago my board was top of google if you searched for UEFA cup final tickets, so annoying had to make the forum register to view.
Quote from: RDGadz on August 07, 2003, 01:41:15 PM
...with yabbse 1.2 or something...
Just a sidenote, sorry for offtopic, but I couldn't resist mentioning it: As far as I know, YSE 1.2 never excisted, or at least never became public downloadable... ;)
SMF is being optimized to work well with search engines so you should have much better results with this software.
Quote from: Axplosion on August 07, 2003, 03:34:15 PM
Quote from: RDGadz on August 07, 2003, 01:41:15 PM
...with yabbse 1.2 or something...
Just a sidenote, sorry for offtopic, but I couldn't resist mentioning it: As far as I know, YSE 1.2 never excisted, or at least never became public downloadable... ;)
sorry it was probably yabbse 1.3
::) u should upgrade to YSE1.5.4 while waiting for SMF v1
upgrade path:
1.3 -> 1.4 -> 1.5.4
Quote from: Spaceman-Spiff on August 07, 2003, 03:59:59 PM
::) u should upgrade to YSE1.5.4 while waiting for SMF v1
upgrade path:
1.3 -> 1.4 -> 1.5.4
yes my site is fully updated....i always make sure after my 1.3 got hacked :'(
Hi RDGadz, actually I think that your problem isn't because of forum... did you move to new domain lately?(just guessing) because it seems that you're not in search engines at all...
also for beginning I don't spot any direct links from your main page to your forums... from what I know links inside javascript doesn't followed by spiders. so if possible put just usual link from your main page to your forum. Also if you looking for tips on how to submit into search engines maybe this post (http://forum.weblamp.net/index.php?thread=567) would be useful for you.
Indeed YaBB Gold(everything what is in cgi-bin isn't too tasty for spiders) and YaBB SE(has semicolons in URLs which is avoided by crawlers) old days has problems with spidering, but after Unknown change URL's structure to one you can see now on board form become really tasty food for spiders... just read this thread (http://www.yabbse.org/community/index.php?thread=23503/90) and if you wish apply same Mod to YaBB SE or wait for SMF as it already will have search engine friendly links.
QuoteI remember a thread awhile ago that talked about getting rid of question marks and other characters in the url would in theory index better on google.
not really it would help you in old days but now it couldn't be really helpful and worth of rewriting script, I mean to get rid of question marks. As I've mention before main problem was semicolons which are gone now.
Quote from: sensovision on August 07, 2003, 04:55:57 PM
Hi RDGadz, actually I think that your problem isn't because of forum... did you move to new domain lately?(just guessing) because it seems that you're not in search engines at all...
also for beginning I don't spot any direct links from your main page to your forums...
Yes but that was 6 months ago, I just moved from www.webporthole.net/yabbse/index.php to www.webporthole.net/forum/index.php
The direct link to my forum was listed under the banner logo which is a layer. I know google can't see whats in the layer but I was hoping it could see under it....maybe not?
But RDGadz, your main site isn't in Google... check yourself http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=webporthole (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=webporthole) as you can see the only page which is indexed by Google is http://www.webporthole.net/forum/index.php?board=1 (http://www.webporthole.net/forum/index.php?board=1) and I think that I know why, it's because you don't have good backlinks to your site and Google need at least one to pick your site into their index...
you may check it yourself as well. it wouldn't be possible to do it through Google since your main page isn't listed there so I've used AllTheWeb for this purpose: http://www.alltheweb.com/search?q=%2Blink.all%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.webporthole.net+-site%3Awebporthole.net&co=1&no=off&l=any (http://www.alltheweb.com/search?q=%2Blink.all%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.webporthole.net+-site%3Awebporthole.net&co=1&no=off&l=any)
as you can see there is 5 links which is pointing to your site... but if you check them you'll find that only 4 is still working and all of them are also not indexed by Google... so they couldn't be counted as good inbound links by Google and will not give you in any case good position. so if you have this domain all the time but only move forums form one location to another than sorry but I can't believe you that your site was ranked good old days and was first one some terms... but later this ranking just disappear. Or it could be possible in the case that your have many backlinks from a guestbooks(since Google count them early days but not they try to filter them) or from other forum posts. Or maybe your site was banned for some reason since I've found this site in backlinks http://www.rdgadz.com/ and it's seems to be your site as well right? and somehow it's also doesn't indexed by Google... (only two pages).
So if you're not aware on what is happening maybe you should try and describe your problems on some SEO communities and see what people will advice you? I recommend this two http://forum.seo-world.com/ and this one http://www.searchguild.com probably folks there would be more helpful than me.
yes www.rdgadz.com is also my site and i found it strange that its also not indexed, even though its very basic text hyperlinks.
I guess that it's not listed just because you don't have any inbound links to this site as well
I am in the process of changing it. I took out the layer just to see what happens.
Quote from: RDGadz on August 07, 2003, 07:35:00 PM
I am in the process of changing it. I took out the layer just to see what happens.
man, as I said before nothing will happen unless you get few good backlinks. Google will not list you otherwise...