Welcome To Simple Machines!

[I, Brian]

Not stupid - just different areas of speciality.

I'll be opening my internet marketing site after Christmas - there will be quite a few articles explaining issues of Search Engine Optimisation. If you ever feel bored you'd be welcome to pop by and read up.

[writeto]

I, Brian,

I may not be an accountant or a marketing rep. but I have no idea what you meant by forum links devalued. The economic definition of devalued does not apply in this manner. Unless you are asserting that people lessen the value of a forum depending on the software it is running. If this is what you are trying to say then... ok.

[Gobalopper]

Google recently changed the way they rank sites and because of this some sites were "devalued" or dropped in the search results.

[I, Brian]

Well, it's not quite those things.

What I mean is that Search Engine Optimisation usually deals specifically with Google - to help sites for specific keywords rank very high for searches.

Now, one way that Google works out the ranking of a page is being calculating it's PageRank (a proper noun).

Every web page is allocated a certain minimum value of PageRank. This can be "voted" to other pages by linking to them. Therefore when lots of webpages are all linking to the same page, then that page will effectively have a much higher PageRank than usual.

Google uses this PR value as a modifier of how well a page would rank in the SERPs (search engine ranking pages).

Because of this, people involved with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) would often focus on generating PR for pages they wanted to see rank high.

One way to do this is to generate lots of pages and have them point to a single page...and this is precisely what vB 3 and phpbb 2 has been doing.

Google seems to have implemented something to it's algorithm (last week, actually) that seems to automatically devalue not only these extraneous pages (ie, assign them far less PR - if any), but also the links on these pages (ie, signature links are now almost worthless for SEO purposes).

(Btw - this is a different update to the infamous Florida update of mid-November that was referenced in a post above.)

Now, looking around the SMF forum, there are about 900 threads indexed. A lot of these threads - unlike vBulletin or phpbb threads - actually have individual PR showing on the Google toolbar - a PR of 3 seems quite common.

What this means is that - whatever is happening to devalue pages in vBulletins and phpbbs - does not appear to be happening to SMF threads.

To cut to the short of it all - SMF could be a very useful form of forum software for SEO's. Initial impression, anyway. I'm going to look more closely at this issue, though.

[Meriadoc]

What this means is that - whatever is happening to devalue pages in vBulletins and phpbbs - does not appear to be happening to SMF threads.

To cut to the short of it all - SMF could be a very useful form of forum software for SEO's. Initial impression, anyway. I'm going to look more closely at this issue, though.

I don't know about anyone else, but I found that an interesting post
but my question is - why? Why did/does SMF escape? It has the link at the bottom of each page (copyright). is it just because it's all brand new and not many users (charter only) have the thing running?

[I, Brian]

Apologies for the slow reply - been through a reformat, and another coming soon. 

As for the question - I think it's an issue of duplicate content - vBulletin 3, for example, duplicates the content to the nth degree - normal view, hybrid views, archive view, printer friendly view, view from post#, etc etc etc. phpbb does it to a lesser degree.

SimpleMachines threads are still hard to index (there's 800+ on Google) - but because they're not shoving PR into duplicate content that's going to be (possibly) devalued anyway, it means the threads fairly well preserve PR.

In short, on this tired night after yet another long day, I think SMF aer doing things right.

[pseudoelmo]

In short, on this tired night after yet another long day, I think SMF aer doing things right.

It would be helpful to know just how they are doing things right so that they can continue.  Do you know exactly?  Or can you surmise?

[pulpitfire]

...SimpleMachines threads are still hard to index (there's 800+ on Google) - but because they're not shoving PR into duplicate content that's going to be (possibly) devalued anyway, it means the threads fairly well preserve PR...

according to Google, PR is determined by how many other sites link back to you, and what the PR of those sites is (http://www.google.com/technology/index.html ).  spidering is affected largely by whether your link url's appear static.(http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html ). 

if this is correct, making url's look static should increase both the number of pages Google indexes, as well as the PR (since every page on every SMF forum has a link back to SMF).

[Durriken]

WOOT Charter Member as of today!  Always loved you guys as YaBB (been there through the whole of the changes hehe) and now glad to be able to support you guys as SMF!!!! I'm happy now, my life is complete.


No I'm not reallly a wierdo *L* just excited about the new board!!

[Cloudbringer]

WOOT Charter Member as of today!  Always loved you guys as YaBB (been there through the whole of the changes hehe) and now glad to be able to support you guys as SMF!!!! I'm happy now, my life is complete.


No I'm not reallly a wierdo *L* just excited about the new board!!

Not weird at all! It's worth getting excited about! Great stuff even in beta, so it's bound to get even more exciting as it progresses.

[Springer]

Just wanted to stop by and say that I like what I've seen so far and look forward to use'n it.

[WXWP]

Cool stuff Dave.... Never knew about this till recently!
Awesome! 

[truecrimson]

I've got a weird question for you guys.  If I sign up for a Charter Membership could I give my "beta priveledges" to someone else?  I really have no interest in messing with the early betas myself(not to mention no time), and I know some who are interested in testing the software, but can't afford , or are hesistant to sign up for the Charter Membership.

[Cccddd]

then just wait a couple weeks. seriously the public beta is soon.

[[Unknown]]

You can buy someone else a Charter Membership if you really want to, there's nothing wrong with that...

-[Unknown]

[David]

You can buy someone else a Charter Membership if you really want to, there's nothing wrong with that...

-[Unknown]

With that said you cannot both share the source files, each install a copy, etc.

[Jeff Lewis]

You can buy someone else a Charter Membership if you really want to, there's nothing wrong with that...

-[Unknown]

And this has occured - twice so far in the way of donated membership from a generous Charter Member.

[truecrimson]

That might be a better route, as they are interested in testing, and I am just impatiently waiting.  Let me give some thought, and see how much I blow on E-Bay today tonight,lol.

[figmentium]

the membership is well worth it

[zoki]

Do we know approximate date when public beta will be out?