google not indexing my forum

[青山 素子]

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.

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.

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.