Thumbs up for search engine optimization

[MrCue]

4.3.4 that still doesnt make it work.

[[Unknown]]

4.3.4 that still doesnt make it work.

Did you turn it on ^_^?

Are you using Apache?

-[Unknown]

[MrCue]

Yes its turned on.
Apache: 1.3.14
PHP: 4.3.4

[pulpitfire]

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]

* applauds. 

! worked

[yeah, sure]you know, i saw that in there a few days ago, and contemplated trying this same thing [/yeah, sure]

[dsdc]

After a year of having a YaBBSE forum, which now has 910 members and 5100+ posts, this forum still does not show up in Google searches when a specific phrase is entered.  After the dust settles a little more with SMF, I would like to upgrade, but I am concerned about the Google-friendliness of SE and SMF software.

I conducted a test, using phrases I had found in different forums to search in Google.  Below is a list of specific comments found in a post, as well as general search terms.  In parentheses is the forum software that produced the Google response.

"Since I'm located in India, I therefore do not qualify"    (phpBB)
"don't elect Kerry"                                                     (invision)
"don't reelect Bush"                                                   (phpBB 2
"paypal vs 2co"                                                         (vBulletin)
"gateway vs dell"                                                      (vBulletin)

On the other hand, after pasting in many phrases from my forum, only one or two showed up.  When I tried pasting phrases from this forum, nothing showed up.  (At least not on the first page.)  Interestingly enough, the SMF forum that caught the one phrase that worked was not from this forum!

Here are phrases from this forum I used:

"The Simple Machines team would like to welcome you to the new site"

"Simple Machines team"   (SF)  This is from the www.NUY.info [nofollow] site

"One of the design goals for SMF is not to be bloatware"

"SMF bloatware"  (This one did pull up a post in the old SE forum)

Why are the other forum software programs showing many specific posts, yet other than the one SE result above, Ya and SM are absent?

I'm not criticising the software, as I am very happy with its functionality and the community that supports it.  However, it appears that it is not the best choice if search engine results are essential.  Do you agree?

[Alexandre P.]

I was searching my admin panel for a way to see the access log, to see if bots were frequently browsing my forum.  I didn't find an access log   I there a way to see if the Googlebot and other search engine robots frequently visit my site trough the SMF administration panel or the Who's Online or anything?

[[Unknown]]

Access log was taken out because it only caused problems.  Your host should provide similar functionality.

http://www.google.com/search?q=welcome+simple+machines (found this forum.)
http://www.google.com/search?q=post_group (found this forum.)
http://www.google.com/search?q=smf (first result, baby.)
http://www.google.com/search?q=Subs-Post.php (found this forum.)
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22welcome+guest.+please+login+or+register%22 (someone removed their copyright!!! PREPARE TO DIE!)

-[Unknown]

[Alexandre P.]

duh! I forgot my host gives me stats and logs

Thx for your reply

[dsdc]

Can anyone answer the question referenced below?

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=4863.msg102175#msg102175

Thanks

[[Unknown]]

http://www.google.com/search?q=welcome+simple+machines (found this forum.)
http://www.google.com/search?q=post_group (found this forum.)
http://www.google.com/search?q=smf (first result, baby.)
http://www.google.com/search?q=Subs-Post.php (found this forum.)
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22welcome+guest.+please+login+or+register%22 (someone removed their copyright!!! PREPARE TO DIE!)

-[Unknown]

I did.

-[Unknown]

[Anguz]

I can understand when someone starts a topic that was discussed before cause they didn't find it when searching, but why not bother to read the replies in a topic before making one's own? beats me ('_')

[dsdc]

Quote from: [Unknown] on May 29, 2004, 03:23:30 PM

I did.

Sorry unknown.  I thought your answer was for Feho's question.  I guess my question pertains to the the depth of the results.  It seems that it is hard for Google to drill down to the actual content of the posts in SMF.  Is that correct?


Quote from: [Anguz] on June 04, 2004, 06:49:06 PM

I can understand when someone starts a topic that was discussed before cause they didn't find it when searching, but why not bother to read the replies in a topic before making one's own? beats me ('_')

That's ok.  I don't understand why people feel compelled to take the time to add personal comments about someone they don't know rather than contribute to the posted topic.

Life is just full of mysteries, I guess.

[Anguz]

Life is just full of mysteries.

ah yes... the mysteries...

[dsdc]

 

[Fizzy]

Well I guess the only way to really be able to guage genuine results would be to have 2 perfectly equal, static forums with the same number of threads etc but different content. One using smart urls and the other using SMF formats. Give each forum a single inbound link and then leave it for a month or two to see which (if any) of the forums gets indexed the most by the likes of GoogleBot.
Without leveling the playing field it's impossible to really say which format is the best for SE Bots.

[Anguz]

that sounds like a good test... would you be willing to run it when I release my mod? I'd really like to measure better the effect it has with Google (^_^)

[Fizzy]

I'd be glad to. Something I can finally help with. Cool 

I'd just want to make it clear though that I'm not knocking SMF format in any way but as some of you may know this is an subject that I would love to be able to gather some empirical data on in the interest of helping the project overall (i'm not much good at anything else )

As Bots like GoogleBot seem to work well enough with subdomains and also give reliable "allinurl" results specifically for subomains I could set up two forums in separate subdoms and see how they go. That would also allow me to track the movements of the Bots more accurately as I would get accurate Subdomain webstats in Cpanel.
If I can gather some quality data on this to help identify the methods a bot uses for navigating and indexing I would be more than happy to share it openly on SMF. I mean, we all know that they hop from link to link but I have never been able to properly study which links Gbot will go for first or try to fathom out why they operate in that way.

[Anguz]

dschwab9 modded his board to add .htm to the queryless URLs generated by SMF with [Unknown]'s help... I think it's a great hack to do, maybe you can start testing with it
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=12273

my mod won't be too different to that in format, the only change would be that I won't use . or , other than for the extension, just a personal preference, but it'd be interesting to see if it actually improves things

[Ben_S]

That post is in the charter members area so most wont be able to access it.

[Anguz]

I'm really sorry, I didn't realize it (--;)