Those who use SE Friendly URLs. Have you checked your site in Google's cache?

[destalk]

Hi all

Interestingly, despite using the SMF search engine friendly URLs for a couple of years, when I check my sites in Google's cache (and Yahoo for that matter), it has indexed every single link with the original 'dynamic' URL. The only way I have managed to get the rewritten URLs to index consistently is by using 301 redirects.

I'd be interested in knowing how this has worked for everyone else.

Any feedback, experiences and tips would be very welcome.

Thanks.

[destalk]

<This thread has been moved here from Admin and Functionality. So, I'll try to revive it...>

It seems that even though SE friendly URLs are switched on, that all the search engines are somehow still seeing the 'dynamic' urls and indexing those. Anyone have any idea how this is happening?

For new SMF forums I have given up on the SE friendly URLs and I'm leaving the default dynamic ones. They get indexed OK.

But for my existing forums, it would be nice to know where the search engines are reading the dynamic URLs from. Anyone got any ideas?

[Ben_S]

Ideally there needs to be a check within SMF for what url type is enabled and if a request comes in for the one that isn't enabled, it should do a 301 to the correct style.

[destalk]

Agreed. Oldiesmann kindly provided some great code to put into index.php which does a great 301 redirect for SMF.

But it is still strange as to how and why search engines aren't seeing the correct url, if the SE friendly option is enabled. Kind of defeats the purpose to some degree. And, if nothing else, it would take something off the server load when processing all those 301 redirects.

[Ben_S]

They do see them, but if they already have an archive of the old url's, they will still check them untill the 301's kick in and they update their locations, also any existing links people have put in will still be followed.

[destalk]

Well here's the issue. They actually seem to see both sets of URLs. The forums I've seen have had SE friendly URLs for two years. But when you check the links of the forum index page in Google's cache (which is only a few days old usually), it is the dynamic links that have been indexed. If you run the cursor over the links of the cached pages, all of them are the dynamic urls. So it seems to me that this is what is shown to Google initially.

Sure, eventually the 301 redirected URLs will be the ones that Google and Yahoo list in their index. But, before I implemented the 301 rule, I found that Google indexed both sets of URL, until it decided which one to use.

What I haven't worked out is, despite SEF urls being switched on, where the SEs are getting the dynamic url from? And they are still getting them, even from brand new threads.

Which is why I am interested to hear if anyone else who has SE friendly URLs enabled is having this issue. Perhaps it is my theme that is giving out the dynamic URL somehow?

[christicehurst]

My spiders have dropped off since I changed settings to the friendly SE. Not too happy about it.

[destalk]

christicehurst

If you have changed from dynamic to SEF urls, you may want to make sure that the old URLs are being diverted to the new ones. Otherwise the search engines will get things 'confused' for quite a while.

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=60194.0