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Search Engine Friendly

Started by CokeCan, December 06, 2003, 08:30:26 AM

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CokeCan

Hi, is it posible to do it search engine friendly? :)

pulpitfire

Quote from: CokeCan on December 06, 2003, 08:30:26 AM
Hi, is it posible to do it search engine friendly? :)

i think [unknown] and Dave already made it spiderable, and shortened the length of urls.  Anguz is also working on a monster mod for YaBB that lets you insert keywords into the url through the board edit, and set all kinds of options, including what file extensions you want it to show, in the mod settings.  I hope that becomes part of the SMF urls, as it seems to yield optimal search engine results.

Gobalopper

Well for Apache users you can make URL's look like this:
http://theterminal.dune2k.com/forum/index.php/topic,164

And by default the URL's are more search engine friendly. Just try searching Google for topics here and you should be able to find them.

Ben_S

Quote from: Gobalopper on December 06, 2003, 03:33:27 PM
Well for Apache users you can make URL's look like this:
http://theterminal.dune2k.com/forum/index.php/topic,164

Thats not actually great since the futhur away from a sites root something is, the less pagerank google will award.
Liverpool FC Forum with 14 million+ posts.

Fizzy

I disagree,

Distance from root is irellevant. Distance from index is.
For each click away from index you can drop one PR unless that page you click to is linked direct from index.
That's why simplemachines.org = PR 5 (high)
simplemachines.org/community/index = PR5 (low)
Any board = PR 3

The boards are the same distance from root as the community index is but are further from Home Index by mouse clicks and therefore PR is lower.
I'd love to be proved wrong on this, but I do not think it's possible to have a board, let alone an individual thread, equal to the home index PR.
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." - A.E.


Oldiesmann

The only thing I would like to see in the way of search engine mods is something to keep search engines from trying to follow user-oriented links, such as reply, notify, send topic and print. It clogs up the error log with messages saying guests aren't allowed to do that thing, and is annoying. I already blocked the FastSearch bot from my board because of this.
Michael Eshom
Christian Metal Fans

Ben_S

Guests dont see the reply, notify, send topic on smf :)
Liverpool FC Forum with 14 million+ posts.

pulpitfire

#7
Quote from: Oldiesmann on December 20, 2003, 04:09:04 PM
The only thing I would like to see in the way of search engine mods is something to keep search engines from trying to follow user-oriented links, such as reply, notify, send topic and print. It clogs up the error log with messages saying guests aren't allowed to do that thing, and is annoying. I already blocked the FastSearch bot from my board because of this.

For YaBB SE,

1. back up your Display.php

2. add $enable_guestposting to globals in Display.php

3. change this:

Quote
   // Compose topic button bar
   $topicButtons = array();

   if (!$mstate || $settings[7] == 'Administrator' || $settings[7] == 'Global Moderator' || in_array($username,$moderators))
      $topicButtons[] = '<a href="' . $cgi . ';action=post;threadid=' . $viewnum . ';title=' . URLencode($txt[116]) . ';start=' . $start . '">' . $img['reply'] . '</a>';

   if ($enable_notification) // $enable_notification is defined in settings
      $topicButtons[] = '<a href="' . $cgi . ';action=notify;threadid=' . $viewnum . ';start=' . $start . '">' . $img['notify'] . '</a>';

   $topicButtons[] = '<a href="' . $cgi . ';action=sendtopic;threadid=' . $viewnum . '">' . $img['sendtopic'] . '</a>';

   $topicButtons[] = '<a href="' . $cgi . ';action=printpage;threadid=' . $viewnum . '" target="_blank">' . $img['printt'] . '</a>';

to this:
Quote
   // Compose topic button bar
   $topicButtons = array();

   if ($enable_guestposting == '1' || ((!$mstate) && ($enable_guestposting == '1')) || ((!$mstate) && ($username != 'Guest')) || $settings[7] == 'Administrator' || $settings[7] == 'Global Moderator' || in_array($username,$moderators))
      $topicButtons[] = '<a href="' . $cgi . ';action=post;threadid=' . $viewnum . ';title=' . URLencode($txt[116]) . ';start=' . $start . '">' . $img['reply'] . '</a>';

   if (($username != 'Guest') && ($enable_notification)) // $enable_notification is defined in settings
      $topicButtons[] = '<a href="' . $cgi . ';action=notify;threadid=' . $viewnum . ';start=' . $start . '">' . $img['notify'] . '</a>';
     
   if ($enable_guestposting == '1' || ((!$mstate) && ($enable_guestposting == '1')) || ((!$mstate) && ($username != 'Guest')) || $settings[7] == 'Administrator' || $settings[7] == 'Global Moderator' || in_array($username,$moderators))
         $topicButtons[] = '<a href="' . $cgi . ';action=sendtopic;threadid=' . $viewnum . '">' . $img['sendtopic'] . '</a>';

   if ($enable_guestposting == '1' || ((!$mstate) && ($enable_guestposting == '1')) || ((!$mstate) && ($username != 'Guest')) || $settings[7] == 'Administrator' || $settings[7] == 'Global Moderator' || in_array($username,$moderators))
         $topicButtons[] = '<a href="' . $cgi . ';action=printpage;threadid=' . $viewnum . '" target="_blank">' . $img['printt'] . '</a>';


This should

1) Disable Reply, Send Topic, and Print, unless you allow guest posting.

2) Disable Notify unless the user is a member.

pulpitfire

Quote from: Ben_S on December 20, 2003, 04:10:57 PM
Guests dont see the reply, notify, send topic on smf :)

now they don't on my YaBB SE 1.5.4, unless guest posting is enabled, and only members see notify :)

Fizzy

OK, I'm going to stick my neck out here and say that from the evidence I have seen so far that SMF is only partially open to indexing by search engines.

Page one in a thread gets indexed no problems, but any subsequent pages do not.

I've checked this against various threads and they simply do not appear in search results.
I get the feeling that the bots don't like the links between pages.
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." - A.E.


[Unknown]

I could change the /.... I've been planning to anyway.... what should I change it to, though?

(options are: ., |, :, +, etc.)

-[Unknown]

Anguz

Cristián Lávaque http://cristianlavaque.com

[Unknown]

Comma is a no, no... it's used for the queryless URLs.  Underscore is already used in parameters... maybe -.

-[Unknown]

Tyris

I'm a big fan of | just coz it looks cool... too big to be an "l"... so myeh...
any problems with that? (I mean just in general... coz I use it for my cms :-\)

Fizzy

As a thought, would we want the individual pages to be indexed or would we just be looking to concentrate of the "All" option ?
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." - A.E.


Ben_S

All the individual pages since most people wont be enabling the all option for topics with lots and lots of replies
Liverpool FC Forum with 14 million+ posts.

RoCKeT-88

PR has no bearing how close the page is too the main index ie http://www.somesite.org.  This for example http://www.somesite.org/folder/folder2/folder3/stillanotherfolder/page.html could have a higher PR than http://www.somesite.org if that long url is the url you submitted to all the SE and was the page every one linked too.  It only because when most link to a site they link to the main index and less for some strange reason that should be where you want them to link too, and same when they submit to the SE.  You dont submit some page thats 5 folders down to Dmoz or Yahoo, well I suspose you could but why I wouldnt know.  Only reason I could see is for the sitemap since a high PR on the site map is good since it "should" link to every page on your site feeding your other pages with its PR.  PR is solely based on how many pages link to that page what thier PR is.  PR is not influenced by its location in the sites directory.  PR isnt given added wieght for it being the main index or the index thats 5 folders down.   Just like if some strange reason Jeff had all the SMF installs link to the chit chat index instead of the main index and submitted the chit chat index to none spidering SE ie Dmoz etc. the PR on the Chit Chat index would be most likely be higher than the main index.
Insert Witty Signature Here.

Fizzy

 ???

I thought we were talking about getting spiders to index pages, not Page Rank  ::)
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." - A.E.


RoCKeT-88

#18
Quote from: Fizzy on December 26, 2003, 03:56:40 AM
???

I thought we were talking about getting spiders to index pages, not Page Rank  ::)

oh we were, were we?  So not sure why there were at least 2 posts about PR then.  Maybe the previous posters didnt realise this was about spidering and not PR.  It still is really nothing to roll your eyes over.

Well far as google spidering SMF,  SMF must be pretty damn spiderable as I Just checked to see how many pages in www.simplemachines.org  were indexed in google and there are 1210 pages indexed. 

Results 1 - 10 of about 1,210. Search took 0.07 seconds

And xboxrules.com which is another SMF board has 1900 pages indexed..............I dont think it can get much better for spidering than those results.
Insert Witty Signature Here.

Fizzy

Quote
And xboxrules.com which is another SMF board has 1900 pages indexed..............I dont think it can get much better for spidering than those results.

Well that's fine if you are happy with only having page 1 of every thread indexed, but if you have relevant content on page 2, 3 or 100 then it's a waste of time isn't it ? ?
So basically make sure that your good content appears on page 1 or else be happy with the number of pages appearing in Google?
If you re-read my previous you will see that I am talking about the fact that Page 1 gets indexed by SE's and following pages do not. You can sit there and count the number of pages you have on Google all day long, it means squat when it comes to getting the content of the following pages in the Results though.

Is the goal to be "Search Engine Friendly" or just "Partly Search Engine Friendly" ?
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." - A.E.


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