Do SMF posts appear in search engines? (Something to be concerned about)

[Toadmund]

is SEO4SMF v 0.2.4 the latest one?

If so It says this in the install:

Requirements
A working SMF 1.1RC3 or SMF 1.1.
Apache with mod_rewrite enabled.

And this:

!!
Error in Package Installation
At least one error was encountered during a test installation of this package. It is strongly recommended that you do not continue with installation unless you know what you are doing, and have made a backup very recently. This error may be caused by a conflict between the package you're trying to install and another package you have already installed, an error in the package, a package which requires another package that you don't have installed yet, or a package designed for another version of SMF.

Here are my mods installed:

Mod Name     Version     
1.    SMF Archive    1.1    [ Uninstall ]
2.    SMF 1.1.1 Update Package    1.1.1    [ Uninstall ]
3.    Topic description    1.0    [ Uninstall ]

[ Delete Mod List ]

PS, sorry for seeming rude, but I was pressed for time, didn't mean to be a dick

[Toadmund]

Here is the error in the SMF package manager:

10.     Execute Modification     ./Sources/TPortal.php     Test failed

This file is blank in my FTP, I don't have Tiny Portal installed.

[destalk]

Just typed site:www.simplemachines.org/community/ into Google.

It shows

Results 1 - 7 of about 22,400 from www.simplemachines.org/community.

However;

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 7 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

Hmmmmmmm. But yet most of the omitted pages are not in the supplemental index. Strange.

[Joshua Dickerson]

Without using the topic name for the url, what methods could be done to increase SEO? How can we make it so that all message indexes and all topics are crawled and will be shown in Google?

[vagrant]

Without using the topic name for the url, what methods could be done to increase SEO? How can we make it so that all message indexes and all topics are crawled and will be shown in Google?

non "fixed" keyword meta tags, set them to post title or leave them out.
title tag moved up to near top are standard seo things

Both are important in google, although keywords only if same on all pages as they don't like it. Title near top very important, as is informative description tags.

[destalk]

Without using the topic name for the url, what methods could be done to increase SEO? How can we make it so that all message indexes and all topics are crawled and will be shown in Google?

Topic name for url is irrelevent IMO. As is keyword metatags, Google ignores them.

I think one of the clues as to why Google is only seeing 7 'dissimilar' pages, can be seen in the google descriptions in the search results.

For some reason it is picking up the 'boilerplate' text on the pages as primary content. For example;

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register. Did you miss your activation email? Have you tried looking at the Simple Machines Online Manual for your answer? ..

I don't know why, but perhaps it is a layout issue with some themes (including the default one), which makes this content seem the most important to Google.

I also think it is crucial to disallow search engines from crawling user profiles, print pages and different language templates.

Thousands of user profiles is simply seen as duplicate boilerplate pages. Why would anyone want to find a user profile anyway? What possible use is it to anyone, until they have actually signed up as a member of a forum?

One of my robots.txt rules is

Code Select Expand


User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /forums/*action=


Which seems to deal with most of the 'non-user friendly' content part of the forum.

And it may be worth disallowing this in robots.txt, rather than the noindex rules, as this way search engines won't even look at the page, let alone index them.

My 2 cents. Your mileage may vary.

[Dannii]

site:domain.com is not a search! It is only a listing. It shows the welcome text because that's the first text on the page. If you're not searching for anything, then you can't expect to get good results. If you actually search for something you'll both get more results, and meaningful excerpts.

[青山 素子]

Topic name for url is irrelevent IMO. As is keyword metatags, Google ignores them.

They don't provide much weight, but might help push you up to the next slot if you are hanging on the edge. That is about all it does, and the results aren't really worth the effort.

I think one of the clues as to why Google is only seeing 7 'dissimilar' pages, can be seen in the google descriptions in the search results.

For some reason it is picking up the 'boilerplate' text on the pages as primary content. For example;

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register. Did you miss your activation email? Have you tried looking at the Simple Machines Online Manual for your answer? ..

I don't know why, but perhaps it is a layout issue with some themes (including the default one), which makes this content seem the most important to Google.

If you don't have a meta description tag, Google picks the first text on the page to display. I am not sure how much this influences the ranking though.

title tag moved up to near top are standard seo things

Both are important in google, although keywords only if same on all pages as they don't like it. Title near top very important, as is informative description tags.

I really don't see what advantage the title tag has in placement in the header block.

[Joshua Dickerson]

The meta description can be changed per the post. I think that would be a good idea. I was actually looking at that.

[motumbo]

Google is the worst search engine of the big three in my opinion.  I can't find any of my forum posts in Google search results, either, but I can find them in MSN and Yahoo.

Most likely, if Google indexes your forum, which it won't do until your website is of a certain age or has a certain number of incoming inks, it will put all the forum posts in the "Supplemental Index".  If something is in the supplemental index, odds are it will never be returned in the search results.

My experience:  Google has some of my forum posts indexed, MSN has more, and Yahoo has most of all.  My forum pages are in Google's supplemental index.  If I search all three search engines for a phrase that is contained in an forum post indexed in all three search engines, it will be found in Yahoo and MSN but not in Google.

I do NOT think the problem with Google is SMF.  It is Google.  Google relies heavily on incoming links.  Unless your forum pages (posts) have incoming links, Google isn't going to index them or if it does index them they are going into Supplemental.  Yahoo and MSN rely far less on incoming links than Google does.

Good luck getting thousands of incoming links to your forum posts so Google will like you.

 

[motumbo]

Being indexed as a site and having specific threads appear as SERP are two different things.

Let's take the example of your site. In your forum, you have this thread about the "Mind Static Device" posted on January 25, 2006: http://ftgforums.com/index.php?topic=1490.0

As a forum owner, you expect that whenever somebody searches for "Mind Static Device" in Google, that thread in your forum would come up as a search result right?

Now, let's try it in Google: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=%22mind+static+device%22&btnG=Search

The "Mind Static Device" thread in your forum does not appear as a search result, and yet it was posted for more than 9 months already. (Your forum had a SERP for the Mind Static Device wiki page but we're talking about the thread itself that I pointed out above.)

That's my concern. When people make a search in Google, SMF posts don't usually come up as a result, as seen in the "Mind Static Device" thread example.

Isn't that something that us forum owners should be concerned about?

It isn't the forum software that is responsible for the experience you describe above it is the inner-workings of Google.

Google is a sh*t search engine! 

Look, if all your posts to your forum had a bunch of incoming links from high Pagerank pages then all your posts would be returned in the Google results.  No incoming links means that in Google's eyes it is of no value and they won't return it in their search results.

That's all their is to it.  Google relies less on relevance and more on incoming links than other search engines.

[motumbo]

By the way, I've tried several times to modify the post immediately above that I made but SMF keeps giving me a "database error".

Also, submit buttons die after SMF returns an error and gives you the link to go "back" to the page you were at before the error occurred.

[Dannii]

That's how Google works, and I like it that way. If something has a lot of incoming links, its obviously worth being linked to, and is worth me reading it. And if something isn't being linked to, why does it deserve to be ranked well?

[motumbo]

That's how Google works, and I like it that way. If something has a lot of incoming links, its obviously worth being linked to, and is worth me reading it. And if something isn't being linked to, why does it deserve to be ranked well?

It deserves to be ranked well if it is relevant to the search.  What is irrelevant is the number of incoming links because not everything is going to be widely linked to.

For example, let's say you are the president of your graduating high school class and are responsible for planning class reunions.  Let's say 6 months prior to the reunion you put up a webpage about the plans for the reunion, when and where it is to be held, cost, RSVP information, etc.

How many incoming links do you think you are going to get???  Probably zero.  Most webmasters didn't go to your highschool and don't give a rip about your reunion, right?

But is your information not worthy of being found by the classmate searching Google for information about upcoming class reunions???  Because if you don't have incoming links, Google isn't going to treat your informative webpage favorably--possibly not even indexing it and if it does index it, it may not return it in the results.

Do you really think that you are going to get hundreds of incoming links to your class reunion page?  Or even two?

The fact that you don't have incoming links does NOT mean that your information is of no value to anyone.

Consider this:  if something has a lot of incoming links it could possibly be because the website owner purchased a lot of incoming links, got into link exchanges with other webmasters (which is NOT indicative of worthiness of being linked to as they are designed to influence search engines only), or even set up a bunch of websites to link to each other so they all appear to have lots of incoming links.

As you were saying...?

[Dannii]

A straight count of incoming links isn't enough to get high Google rankings, because it takes into account where the links come from etc.
Now how is it going to be able to determine what's relevant to your search? When there are billions of web pages you can't have people determining individually what is relevant to each topic. Google spends a huge amount of money on their engineers to try and make each search return the most relevant results.
In your example of a school reunion website, you should be able to get incoming links from the school's webpage, your own, some past students blogs perhaps, and maybe even a local newspaper or two. All of these should be very relevant incoming links, especially if they talk about the school a lot.
If someone purchases lots of incoming links, they're very unlikely to be relevant. The page with the link on it won't have any similar context or content to the linked-to page. Again, Google spends a huge amount of money to make sure these schemes don't work.

[motumbo]

A straight count of incoming links isn't enough to get high Google rankings, because it takes into account where the links come from etc.

What happens to your webpage in Google's eyes then if it has 0 incoming links?

Now how is it going to be able to determine what's relevant to your search?

Easily:  by the search terms entered into the search box!

Search term example: St. Louis South High School Reunion

I'd assume that any webpage about St. Louis South class reunions would be relevant to those search terms regardless of how many incoming links there were.  Right?  Any page with those keywords either in that exact phrase or close to it would be relevant, right?  The Class of 1992 St. Louis South High School reunion page would be relevant, as would be the 1957 St. Louis High School reunion, etc.

But, if there are no incoming links, Google is probably not going to return it in its results despite the fact that it is totally relevant to the search.

When there are billions of web pages you can't have people determining individually what is relevant to each topic. Google spends a huge amount of money on their engineers to try and make each search return the most relevant results.

You just said Google spends a lot of money.  They could hire tens of thousands of people to evaluate search results, remove spam, etc.  But they don't need to.  They need to rely on what is contained on the webpage and not on how many incoming links it has.

The fact that Google spends a lot of money doesn't mean they are the best.  Plenty of Linux users will argue that Windows is not the best because Microsoft spends a lot of money on it.  (Ask around here!)  Microsoft reportedly spent $6 billion developing Vista.  It doesn't mean anything other than they spent a lot of money. 

In your example of a school reunion website, you should be able to get incoming links from the school's webpage, your own, some past students blogs perhaps, and maybe even a local newspaper or two.

Blogs?  What value are blogs?  Most are very low PR.  Google values incoming links largely based on the pagerank of the page providing the incoming link. 

I just checked the website of the high school I went to and there are absolutely no links of any kind on it to any class reunion websites.  I don't know if school districts pay webmasters to just sit around and wait for link requests to come in.  I kind of doubt it.

Do you link to every website everytime someone sends you an email asking you for a link?

All of these should be very relevant incoming links, especially if they talk about the school a lot.

Relevant?  Perhaps--if those incoming links exist (remember, the hypothetical webpage is going up only 6 months prior to the reunion.  Not a lot of time to get incoming links, is it?).  But as I mentioned above the incoming link is valued largely based on the pagerank of the page containing the link.  Low PR page linking to something means the link is of little or no value.  If that wasn't the case, people would just set up dozens of free websites on Freewebs.com and instantly have a bunch of incoming links to look popular.

If someone purchases lots of incoming links, they're very unlikely to be relevant.
The page with the link on it won't have any similar context or content to the linked-to page. Again, Google spends a huge amount of money to make sure these schemes don't work.

What if the content on the linking page is relevant?  For example, a new porn website buys links from existing porn websites.

I know you know that there is an entire industry that does nothing but buy and sell links to make Google think they are popular.  I know that you also know that webmasters contact other webmasters trying to get links in an attempt to influence Google. 

What you said about Google makes me think of this analogy:  If a girl doesn't get asked out on a lot of dates, then she musn't be worth dating.  Yet nothing could be further from the truth.

The fact that a website has a lot of links does not mean it is of the most value to the searcher.  What is of value is the information contained on those webpages and incoming links--particularly if they were purchased or acquired via link exchanges--does not mean the content is valuable.

What about small town high schools?  What about high schools that no longer exist?  Neither are likely to get many, if any, links to reunion webpages.  But that doesn't mean the information is irrelevant.  It doesn't mean Google shouldn't return it because it has no links.

As a quick test I randomly chose an SMF post and seached Google and Yahoo using a phrase from that SMF post.

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=133553.0

"add a horizontal Google ad in the area circled in green"

Yahoo returned the post, Google did not.

Then I searched Yahoo and Google for: SMF+add+horizontal+google+ad.  Inarguably, Yahoo's results are superior.

http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0geurrBgcBFlSIB6oRXNyoA?p=SMF+add+horizontal+google+ad&ei=UTF-8&fr=sfp&x=wrt

http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&q=SMF+add+horizontal+google+ad&btnG=Search

Also, Yahoo shows 322,000 simplemachines.org pages indexed.  Google has only 106,000 (and the bulk of those are probably in Supplemental and will never be returned in search results).   

[destalk]

site:domain.com is not a search! It is only a listing. It shows the welcome text because that's the first text on the page. If you're not searching for anything, then you can't expect to get good results. If you actually search for something you'll both get more results, and meaningful excerpts.

Indeed. I never claimed it was search. But it's one useful way (of many) to see how a search engine sees the content structure of a web site. Having only 7 pages come up in this way is very unusual, as is the lack of picking up a unique description.

[KGIII]

If we push all zealotry and BS aside - I get better results from MSN/Live. Much better actually. Google has reached the point where, I am afraid, they are too large. Their ideals of doing no evil have long since been overshadowed by their desire to make more money.

Having done no marketing with the link in my signature Google now has me down to just 54 links. It was up to about 1000 just a month ago and yet it ranks just as high I suppose. MSN lists about 400 page and doesn't have session IDs in the links. I do a search on Google for:

"I just noticed we don't have a hardware section?"

Google? Nothing returned...

First (and only) listings on MSN?

Two results returned - both pointing to the appropriate pages.

A search for registerfly theft (without quotes) points to my blog in MSN first, in Google? Not on the first page. In fact, it has sites that have a lower PR listed higher. I am boarderline convinced that Google WANTS you to rank poorly - that way you want to buy ads. After all, with 21000 inbound links it is a bit unusual to rank just a PR4 still but, then again, I don't bother with tags of any kind or even optimization. (I get too much traffic there as it is.)

To get back to the topic at hand, SMF topics appear in search engines. They do, slowly they appear. Good SEO is an on-going process and not something that is done overnight but rather something that is maintained like a diet.

[pushkin22]

Is it possible to delete the comma in the search engine friendly URLs?

For example, make
http://www.domain.com/index.php/board,52.0.html or http://www.domain.com/index.php/topic,1852.0.html
to
http://www.domain.com/index.php/board52.0.html
and http://www.domain.com/index.php/topic1852.0.html

[motumbo]

If we push all zealotry and BS aside - I get better results from MSN/Live. Much better actually. Google has reached the point where, I am afraid, they are too large. Their ideals of doing no evil have long since been overshadowed by their desire to make more money.

I use MSN/Live when I can't find anything in Yahoo or Google.  And sometimes I actually find what I'm looking for in MSN/Live when I couldn't find it in Yahoo or Google.

Sometimes I search for names of people I know, went to school with, or worked with when I have insomnia.  Using Live/MSN I found that a former coworker of mine and her husband opened a franchise and declared bankruptcy.  I didn't find that interesting info in Yahoo or Google.

No search engine will ever be 100% perfect.  However, Google isn't even trying to be perfect--especially when they are purposely not showing results that they index because there aren't enough incoming links.

I do a search on Google for:

"I just noticed we don't have a hardware section?"

Google? Nothing returned...

First (and only) listings on MSN?

Two results returned - both pointing to the appropriate pages.

It's not in Yahoo, either.

A search for registerfly theft (without quotes) points to my blog in MSN first, in Google? Not on the first page. In fact, it has sites that have a lower PR listed higher.

In Yahoo the Simplemachines post you made about the Registerfly theft is in position #1 and your blog is in position #4.  blog.kgiii.info/2007/01/15/the-registerfly-sage

So in your case, Live and Yahoo are definitely superior to Google.

I am boarderline convinced that Google WANTS you to rank poorly - that way you want to buy ads.

That is a popular conspiracy theory.  Look at it this way:  it used to be easy to get indexed in Google and returned in the search results.  Now it is very difficult.  What changed?  They went public.  They now have to generate huge profits to justify their astronomical stock price.