Almost ready to give up on SMF

[shawn911]

I used to use Hotbot, too.  1996 I think it was.

I used to use Excite and Netscape in the years 1996-1999 .
Unfortunately, all these good search engine are used by nobody  

[Dannii]

I don't think Google's search engine is a mess. That's only your opinion. It seems to work fine for me

[motumbo]

The problem is that 2000 is the Google's century. Like Micro$$oft, Google is eating evrything. Millions of people are using Google every day. But now, we've discovered that Google's system is a mess it's too late.

Google used to be really good.  Until Matt Cutts got involved.  I blame Matt Cutts.

I don't think Google's search engine is a mess. That's only your opinion. It seems to work fine for me

Interestingly, you'll find more information on simplemachines.org using Yahoo than you will using Google.

Searching for Motumbo site:simplemachines.org returns 189 results on Yahoo and only about 120 on Google.  If you are looking for information specific to simplemachines.org, you will be at a disadvantage searching Google for it.

[shawn911]

I don't think Google's search engine is a mess. That's only your opinion. It seems to work fine for me

If it works fine for you, please, give us your secret, because, as you can notice it, several threads (like this one) are complaining about the fact that Google does not index their SMF Forum  very well.

I am having exactlythe same issue than dupont24( see his post : http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=127715.msg815512#msg815512 ) .Prior to SMF, I used to have some thousands pages indexed in Google, but since, i migrated to SMF forums, it is decreasing everyday. Now, i am only at some hundred pages indexed in Google and only useless things are indexed. I have used Davilac site map, SEO, the Disallow in the robots.txt to disable duplicates, but nothing. In the same time, my concurrents (with other forums) have theirs posts indexed in only some days.

Interestingly, you'll find more information on simplemachines.org using Yahoo than you will using Google.

This is true. If you have SMF used by Joomla, the difference is TOO big. Yahoo indexes lots of pages, while Google will only index the SMF home page or some useless pages.

[motumbo]

Prior to SMF, I used to have some thousands pages indexed in Google, but since, i migrated to SMF forums, it is decreasing everyday.

Google does slowly drop pages from its index.  I have had the same experience.  I had x number of pages indexed.  Then over a period of 2 weeks or so I was losing 2 - 10 pages from the index everyday.  Then one day I had 2x pages indexed. 

[destalk]

 

Prior to SMF, I used to have some thousands pages indexed in Google, but since, i migrated to SMF forums, it is decreasing everyday.

When I moved one of my forums from SMF to vBulletin, Google dropped all my pages. It took over 12 months to get the site reindexed and returning sueful search results.

Google doesn't like large changes. Whatever it they are.

[Harro]

When I moved one of my forums from SMF to vBulletin, Google dropped all my pages. It took over 12 months to get the site reindexed and returning sueful search results.

Google doesn't like large changes. Whatever it they are.

When you do something like that you should use a 301 direct to redirect the old pages to the new ones.

[destalk]

Did it. Didn't help.

[青山 素子]

When you do something like that you should use a 301 direct to redirect the old pages to the new ones.

It won't help, Google keeps track of your change rate. If you suddenly jump insanely different in changes, you'll get flagged as your behavior is unusual.

[destalk]

When you do something like that you should use a 301 direct to redirect the old pages to the new ones.

It won't help, Google keeps track of your change rate. If you suddenly jump insanely different in changes, you'll get flagged as your behavior is unusual.

Indeed. Although if you don't change domains, this should generally work out OK. Especially as you are redirecting to pages holding the same content. But with different forum structures being so different...

Anyway, the point is (again) that it is not always SMFs fault if a site is not getting indexed. It's one of those things that can affect lots of web sites.

But chopping and changing URLs, by switching SEO friendly options on and off, or whatever, is the worst thing a forum owner can do. The main thing is to build unique content and prevent duplicates as much as is reasonable.

Eventually, a web site will become popular and indexed. But it can take several months, or even a couple of years. Google is a great search engine, but if it gets an idea in its head about a certain site, it can take a long time for it to trust it and, all things being equal, no amount of 'trickery' will help. Sometimes it's just a question of building content and waiting.

My 2 cents.

[bammoeller]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=GGGL%2CGGGL%3A2006-44%2CGGGL%3Aen&q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.seo-webtools.net&btnG=Search
Sure google dont like smf boards.
It's not finding any links on my 3 month old board!!!

[Defiant]

Someone mentioned it could be the default skin so could their be any truth in this ?

[Dannii]

Well the default theme is very unsemantical, so compared to a semantical theme it would suffer.

[motumbo]

Sure google dont like smf boards.
It's not finding any links on my 3 month old board!!!

Three months is nothing.  You may have to wait a year or more before Google starts crawling you deeply and indexing you well.  Unless you have HUNDREDS or thousands of incoming links, that is. 

Google definitely doesn't treat the little webmaster kindly.   

[Kindred]

and yet, I disagree...   my sites are fairly well crawled, despite being moderately small to tiny...

[bammoeller]

Sure google dont like smf boards.
It's not finding any links on my 3 month old board!!!

Three months is nothing.  You may have to wait a year or more before Google starts crawling you deeply and indexing you well.  Unless you have HUNDREDS or thousands of incoming links, that is. 

Google definitely doesn't treat the little webmaster kindly.   

I was just joking.
My site has thousands of found pages in 3 months.

[Harro]

Actually, for your forum it are only a few.
All the other pages are from your portal & xml files.

But I agree with Kindred.
Never had problems with it myself

[bammoeller]

I just added the portal 4 days ago.

[khoking]

my site is pretty new (one month + old), but I find google crawling and indexing my site only a few days after I submit my URL to them. They have just indexed my forum front page last month, and I have now opened up the forum to guests so I hope googlebot will crawl on the forum topics soon

[青山 素子]

Three months is nothing.  You may have to wait a year or more before Google starts crawling you deeply and indexing you well.  Unless you have HUNDREDS or thousands of incoming links, that is. 

Google definitely doesn't treat the little webmaster kindly.   

Well, it all depends. A big thing with Google is trust. Anything you do to break Google's trust of your site will cause you problems. One of my sites has a few hundred incoming links, and it gets crawled about once a week.

Some of my observations from running a few sites and reading about some problems:

• Google seems to start out with a neutral trust. There isn't any reason to trust you, but they also don't not trust you. Any stuff on the initial crawl will start a direction of how Google trusts you.
  
• If you have content on the site that is on lots of other sites when Google first sees you, you will become untrustworthy. This means to remove any placeholder pages as quick as you can once you get your hosting. A 403 error or blank page isn't as bad as having those advertising pages up.
  
• If you have a certain rate of updates, any sudden increase in rate raises suspicion. This is why changing forum systems will cause problems in indexed pages. Even doing 301 redirects won't help as that is a change.
  
• Trying to over-optimize can cause you problems. Stacking your keywords in an attempt to get terms added, and other bad tactics will cause problems.
  

Of course, there are a lot more things, but most things will only be encountered if you actively try to cater to SEO tactics. Remember that things are cumulative. Having a few points against you and then making big changes can push you into a major area of un-trust.

My usual thing is to not pay attention to the special SEO method of the day, and instead follow good practices on your site. Be as semantic as you can, table-based layouts have a handicap as the engine has more problems determining what has importance and what does not. Always use alt tags for images to describe the image, it helps search engines and users who can't see the images. If you are not using a CMS or portal system, use a logical layout on your site. Put sections into different directories, don't stick everything in the main folder. If you must make site changes, do it in sets. If the changes are major, do it in as few steps as you can to minimize the penalty for big changes.

Doing these things has helped me out, and got my ranking to be fairly good. YMMV.