Thumbs up for search engine optimization

[[Unknown]]

I would install it now... we've had this site running for a while, over several changes in the URLs, etc.... should be fine.

-[Unknown]

[innerfire]

OK, I can wait, . . . .
Concern though,
   I just tried the search engine quarry free url button and had to dig deep into MySQL to get it to fix so the site would work again.  I guess this means that the Apache on Net Firms does not support this setting.  Will your future mod need Apache, or .htaccess ?  I have used  the latter, but don't know where to begin to re-author the urls this way. 

[[Unknown]]

I don't really like the option myself, but it requires a certain configuration of Apache and PHP to work properly.

-[Unknown]

[dschwab9]

But it's really cool if you have apache configured so it will work 

* dschwab9 like!

[Reeka @ The Silver River]

Thanks for the info about finding out how many google pages you have.  I just checked and I was amazed that we have 17.  Of course I just found out today how to tell Google is doing a crawl of your site.   I realize now that I see them there every day.  Thanks, guys!

[innerfire]

Every day, that's great.  I am currently moving away from Net Firms ($@#%^), as I have no idea who has been at my site, they don't have current versions of php, will not let me access there web logs, and were down last night (who knows how often as they don't post stats on their uptime).  Anyways, I digress, I have been waiting for my pages to get indexed by google, and they only have five pages, sometimes 9, but the four are from November.  I would love to know what is up, but will most likely not know until I move to another host.  My front page is updated every couple of days, however. 

[Reeka @ The Silver River]

I'm just curious.  Is Google checking me more because I now have SMF or do I just realize Google is checking me since I got SMF?

[innerfire]

I'm just curious.  Is Google checking me more because I now have SMF or do I just realize Google is checking me since I got SMF?   

                                             
Zen, I like it    

I am no expert, but I have noticed that all of the posts here are being indexed by google (just pick an old post, copy a string of text, go to google, put a quote sign, paste the text, and end with a quote sign.  I bet you find the page if the post is over a few weeks old.  I don't think that you can say that about any other bulletin board. 

[Reeka @ The Silver River]

Cool!  I was being Zen and didn't know it. 

[Fizzy]

I don't think that you can say that about any other bulletin board. 

Unfortunately this is not a unique feature to SMF.

My own YSE board has over 900 pages indexed on Google, likewise many other BB's like PHPBB get indexed.

[David]

I don't think that you can say that about any other bulletin board. 

Unfortunately this is not a unique feature to SMF.

My own YSE board has over 900 pages indexed on Google, likewise many other BB's like PHPBB get indexed.

While it definitly isn't unique, SMF is doing quite well.  vB rarely gets the actual threads indexed but rather the seperate printable section.

[Fizzy]

Have we been able to establish yet if the changes made to the url has been accepted by Googlebot etc when searching multiple pages ?

I've run some checks and can't find any
Boards have been

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cache:0r2wJrCva_EJ:www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php%3Fboard%3D5.80+allinurl:www.simplemachines.org&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

and also topic=xxx.msgyyy

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cache:bb6rS8CEcbkJ:www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php%3Ftopic%3D407.msg4545+allinurl:www.simplemachines.org&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

also every profile in SMF

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cache:e2j52Sb6C0MJ:www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php%3Faction%3Dprofile%3Bu%3D517+allinurl:www.simplemachines.org&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

it tried to take an "all" on a thread but only got so far and then bailed out

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cache:AyHIgMIv-T4J:www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php%3Ftopic%3D71.0%3Ball+allinurl:www.simplemachines.org&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

It even followed a "new" tag

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cache:Kh5WZACY9wcJ:www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php%3Ftopic%3D108.new+allinurl:www.simplemachines.org&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Any more thoughts on this ?

[innerfire]

I just wanted to give the smf team a big thumbs up and thank you all.  Less than a month ago I started this thread and the "thumbs up for search engine optimization" should be renamed "two thumbs up".  I installed smf, upgraded my hosting company, and now my smf pages are ranking higher than my "optomized" html pages.  The smf pages are probably responsible for drawing about half of my new site traffic this week.  -M

[Fizzy]

Revisiting this one.

I'm concerned to see that in roughly the same time period we have 2,900 pages indexed for SMF Community (quite a lot of them are member profiles) whilst in the same time my YSE board has racked up 11,000 pages and Google has added to the whole site PR (thanks to Anguz)

Has anyone been tracking the movements of spiders on their SMF boards? Seeing what they will take or leave?

[David]

I guess I am extremely happy so far.  A site search on www.boardnation.com returns over 18,000 results.  The bulk of these are all in our forum.  I haven't looked to see if our page rank has increased but we have Googlebot visiting daily and often times 5 to 30 bots at once.

[Fizzy]

Thanks for the feedback David,

I noticed that boardnation is massively spidered (over 20,000 indexed) using the format
/index.php/topic,394/15

Here on SMF we are seeing the
/index.php?topic=7542.15

and on my home board i'm using
/index.php/t6061-20.php

I'm wondering if spiders are still be discouraged by the ? in the url?

[pulpitfire]

Revisiting this one.

I'm concerned to see that in roughly the same time period we have 2,900 pages indexed for SMF Community (quite a lot of them are member profiles) whilst in the same time my YSE board has racked up 11,000 pages and Google has added to the whole site PR (thanks to Anguz)

Has anyone been tracking the movements of spiders on their SMF boards? Seeing what they will take or leave?

apparently, although i use Apache, i have some retarded version of php that can't handle buffers or something.  so i'm unable to use the url mod on SMF, until, hopefully, Anguz makes one that is non-buffering.

[[Unknown]]

What version of PHP are you using?

I can show you how to *try* it, but it has been known to crash PHP on older versions.  (it was a nasty bug.)

-[Unknown]

[pulpitfire]

4.2.2

[[Unknown]]

Okay, try this - Sources/QueryString.php, find:

Code Select Expand

// PHP 4.1.x and some 4.2.x seem to crash when you modify output size... or something?
if (version_compare(PHP_VERSION, '4.3.0') == -1 || $scripturl == '' || !defined('SID'))
return $buffer;

Replace that with:

Code Select Expand

// I'm living dangerously!!
if ($scripturl == '' || !defined('SID'))
return $buffer;

-[Unknown]