I know this has been discussed, but I thought by now I would see some improvement, but I have not. Ever since I changed from Threads 6.5 to 7.X, my Google presence has GREATLY decreased. I have been running 7.X since December and when I Google certain words that I KNOW are in threads all over my site, I get no threads. I tried Google's advanced search to set the domain to only look for those words on my domain - Well, I find that hardly any of my actual threads are indexed in Google. Lots of other pages from my site, such as pp-classified pages, etc., but almost no actual links to threads! My new member rate has dropped dramatically as well! I used to get 7-8 new members per day from Google now I'm lucky if I get 1 or 2 from Google per week. Has anyone figured out what the heck is going on with Google not crawling the actual threads? This is starting to worry me a LOT! It was NOT like this until I "upgraded". I love Threads 7, but man, I have GOT to figure out why Google no longer likes my site.
For example, the phrase "Has anyone here tried Electrolytic Rust Removal" is in a thread that was posted way back in January. I would have thought that if I Googled that exact phrase, It would show up with a link to the thread that contains that phrase. But it returns NO results. I am beginning to thing I may have to move to another forum product - but what?
i too, think this is a matter of great importance. google is most certainly indexing my site -- it's always listed in the spiders section of who's online -- but it seems not to be picking up many threads.
this matter is now complicated for me personally because it seems my server cannot support spider-friendly URLs.
now, i'm not about to fly off into a huff and drop UBB ... i've got far too much invested in it now. but it would be reassuring to know that this issue was being taken seriously, and that plans were in place to try and address the problem.
i'm not completely convinced that site maps are the answer. or at least, the complete answer. though if someone wants to provide some compelling evidence that they work with UBB, i'll be all ears
now, i'm not about to fly off into a huff and drop UBB ... i've got far too much invested in it now. but it would be reassuring to know that this issue was being taken seriously, and that plans were in place to try and address the problem.
I MUST fix this. Something drastic has changed since I switched to Threads 7 and I urge Rick and anyone else involved to PLEASE take this issue very seriously. There is no reason for almost none of my actual threads to be indexed unless there is something fundamentally broken. My forum growth has slowed to a crawl and it used to be growing like gang-busters! There is something about this new Threads that Google does NOT like - and we as a community need to figure out what it is and FIX it.
And that's what i'm waiting to kick in or Not? But i do want to wait to see if it has made a diffrence, if google search lists the urls the site map has in a search then i will be very happy.
But in such a short time, its not fair to say either way. 1,2,3 months is a decent review time scale.
I do have high hopes for it
BOOM !! Version v7.6.1.1 People who inspire me IsaacME Gizmo
Mark, the change won't be noticeable immedaitely, likely after a month you'll see things start to get larger (keep in mind the sitemap is to ultimately shove their discovery bot to the side, and tell their crawling bot where exactly to look, so once it gets started it'll work well).
BTW, my rankings are only from 2 months of the sitemap (as I made it, dun dun dun, 2 months ago lol).
Something I noticed is that my one google bot is actually Google-AdSense and not plane old google.
I think Gizmo - what people are saying is that why should they have to spend $50 on a sitemap - personally I would if there was a way for it to list all non-threads pages that included a threads template and threads script page.
I have not checked my google listings recently, so do not know if it has gone up at all - but if my single bot is connected with the Adsense that I have on my site and not anything to do with the google database then it is not working for me.
Maybe google have moved the goalposts - but then why are some sites better than others.
For me, my listings in the UK Google is diabolical - this may be due to an unrelated matter - but it is a concern for me.
If I do site:fansfocus.com on google.co.uk - I get a big fat zero! I would love to know why??
And I copied a random phrase exactly from this thread:
"have the link carry the date/time tag"
Then I Googled that phrase and got not results. I tried this on my site with all manner of random phrases from different posts made since the move and NONE of the phrases were returned in Google. Conclusion: Google is not indexing my site threads at all! Now we need to figure out why! If Google chnaged the way they spider, then they did it at the exact same time that I switched to T7.
It has been said that google has changed the way they crawl sites now with only one bot. Have you contacted google about this? Google is crawling my site all the time.
It seems there's a bit of mass hysteria going on. Some of the numbers being thrown around here are just wrong. For example, Ian. You said you have 0 links in google.co.uk. Follow this link:
That sure doesn't look like a big fat zero to me. It's showing something like 71,000 results, and the link above is directly to a page that has links to your forum in the database.
I've mentioned this in a previous post as well. Basil, one of the important things is back links to your site. The more links you have pointing back to your site, the more thoroughly it will be indexed.
For example, we have many back links pointing here. Do a search for "UBB.threads 7.1 Released" you'll see that it's been indexed.
Or search for this one. "Question on alignment property on the registration screen." Gizmo posted that on the 8th, and it's already in google.
Or use ubbdev.com. Search for "UBBDev News - February 2007". This was posted on Feb 22, and is indexed.
Google my personal site. It's very small, site:rb69.com The only links that point to that site are here in my signature. That's it. I've never submitted the site to google or any other search engine for that matter. They have 89 pages indexed. As small as my site is, that's pretty much my entire site.
We run a totally stock board. I don't do anything special here. We don't have a sitemap, no robots.txt, and google is obviously indexing this site. If there is some problem with what we're doing that google doesn't like, then it sure would seem like we'd be suffering from the same issues.
I do take all problems seriously, and if there is an issue, I always work on trying to fix it. I just don't see what I can do on this one. We're using the same style urls we were using in 6.5.5, and the same format to process them with search engine friendly ones.
That sure doesn't look like a big fat zero to me. It's showing something like 71,000 results, and the link above is directly to a page that has links to your forum in the database.
1. Dont Shoot me as i probably done what Ian Done Living in the UK. 2. You sure you wont shoot me?
Ok
Following your link Rick i also see all of those links. And in the Google Search criteria it has the option underneath for web or co.uk.
So if i tick .co.uk. as the search criteria i get a fat zero.
Its probably a google thing and also a Location thing, this is the url from the uk results i get zero.
site:vbulletin.com = 2 links, and neither of them are actual vbulletin pages.
site:phpbb.com = 0 links.
So, I'm not an expert on google.co.uk, so that seems like something not just related to UBB.threads.
Ok, so maybe it's just a uk thing and it will only show domains that end in .uk? Not sure. If that's not the case, and it was indexing them before, then it would seem Ian would at least have some old links in there.
Edit:
And that surely seems to be the case. On that same page, do this:
Same site, different top level domain. Since Ian's domain ends in .com and not .co.uk, that's probably why he has 0 links.
What I'm getting at basically by my original statement, of mass hysteria, is some things get said that people feed off of, but doing a bit of investigation shows that it's not really something related to UBB.threads.
I will add a bit of advice here as well. Some people see a lower ranking so they start to panic and they go changing variables. What I mean is this scenario:
Uhoh, my google ranking is down. I better change something. Hmm, let's try search engine friendly URLs. 2 weeks later, it hasn't improved. Let's change it back to non-search engine friendly URLs.
See a problem with the above? When you make those changes it's like moving your site again. Your URLs are totally changed, so that's like starting all over again. I imagine, if you switch, and then switch back and keep fiddling, you'd probably get penalized as your URLs are changing very frequently, and this affects all of your URLs to the forum as well.
Mark, as for your particular site. Did you make any changes to the URL or something. You have some very weird results in Google, and it's probably confusing them to say the least. I know you actually run under wikwirral.co.uk, however google is also indexing your site as cruisewirral.com. Now the problem is this.
Do this: site:cruisewirral.com +showflat
Now when you click on any of your search results you get sent to a page like this:
So it's being redirected, but that redirect link is bad. You have a couple thousand links in google under cruisewirral.com and they all end up just linking to the main forum page since it appears you have a bad redirect. I imagine Google would end up penalizing a site for that since they all just look like they are pointing to the same page.
Like I said. Big changes like this will really hurt your ranking, as all this time Google now thinks all of those old links are just duplicate content.
Ian. It looks like you're up to about 154,000 links to showflat in Google. I'm pretty sure that's quite a bit higher than the last time I looked at it.
Very first post in the results was one made on the 18th of this month.
Yeah, so basically what's happening is even if I go to a link to an actual post in Google. It's going to ubbthreads.php/ubbthreads.php/ubb=blah. Since that's not a valid link it just redirects to the main front page. So, all of your cruisewirral google links that point to individual posts are just going to the main page.
No worries Ian. I just try and make sure that we can isolate actual issues that might be related to threads. Some people will come and read posts and just see "0 links in google" and automatically jump to assumptions and then it just compounds things.
Well, it is zero, but it's unrelated to UBB.threads. I'm just trying to make sure that people following along know and don't just assume that it's a threads issue.
Basil, you definitely have something interesting going on. You still have all of the old links in google from your 6.5 forum. You have a bunch of links to the new forum as far as to the general forum listing and the individual postlist pages. But you don't appear to have many new links to the new showflat script.
What we usually see is the old links eventually go away and google reindexes your new ones. For some reason, they are keeping all of your old links in the system. You have thousands and thousands pointing to the old showflat script but barely any to the new.
For example, do this:
site:britishcarforum.com +ubb/postlist
You'll see it has a bunch of links to individual postlist pages. But if you do this:
site:britishcarforum.com +ubb/showflat
You'll see that there aren't many listed at all. Your site appears to be the only one with this problem. Everyone else that has posted has many many links to the new showflat. I can search for distinct subjects from their site and they are listed in Google. Yours I cannot however. I'm not sure if your site is being penalized for something, or what. I know you had made the change to/from search engine friendly not too long ago, so not sure if it's related.
Basil, you definitely have something interesting going on.
Interesting and troubling. I see a single Google bot all the time and it "says" it is reading posts, but they don't seem to actually be indexing. Well, now we know ther eis "something" going on, now the trick will be to figure out exactly what!
Originally Posted by Rick
You still have all of the old links in google from your 6.5 forum. You have a bunch of links to the new forum as far as to the general forum listing and the individual postlist pages. But you don't appear to have many new links to the new showflat script. What we usually see is the old links eventually go away and google reindexes your new ones. For some reason, they are keeping all of your old links in the system.
Right, that's what I've been saying. It is indexing "part" of my site, but not the main parts. I am wondering if having the re-director to the old threads could be part of the problem? Should I get rid of that at some point on the theory that Google will then evantually drop the old links and re-index the new? Just a thought.
Originally Posted by Rick
For example, do this:
site:britishcarforum.com +ubb/postlist
You'll see it has a bunch of links to individual postlist pages. But if you do this:
site:britishcarforum.com +ubb/showflat
You'll see that there aren't many listed at all.
Even using the site:britishcarforum.com +ubb/postlist there were only 153 that cam eup for me (only 20 the other search for showflat). Clearly I have a problem.
Originally Posted by Rick
Your site appears to be the only one with this problem. Everyone else that has posted has many many links to the new showflat.
Lucky me. When I do YOUR site with the showflat seach above, I get just over 12,000 results (but you have over 26,000 topics!!) But that is clearly better than the 20 results that I get for my site.
Originally Posted by Rick
I can search for distinct subjects from their site and they are listed in Google. Yours I cannot however. I'm not sure if your site is being penalized for something, or what. I know you had made the change to/from search engine friendly not too long ago, so not sure if it's related.
That change was only temporary and only because I was desperate for Google to index my site. Ok, so not all are having this issue, so now I have to figure out what is different from my site than everyone elses. One thing that is also different for me besides the new Threads 7, is that I moved to a dedicated server and am using a server management service to monitor things, install security, etc. Now I am wondering is maybe something about my server set up could be preventing google from crawling my site? For example, when I recently installed a wiki on my site, I found that I could not save any edited pages - I would get "Forbidden You don't have access..." Well, I finally figured out that if I disabled ssomething called mod_secure - an Apachie security thingy, then my wiki worked right. Now I only disabled it for the wiki directory, not my entire root directory, so I'm wondering if maybe something like that might be at issue with Google? I know I'm grasping at straws, but I don't have anything else to grasp at right now.
It's hard to say for sure what's keeping them from indexing the newer content. On your redirect scripts did you have a 301 or a 302 for the redirect? It shouldn't matter because we have people using both without a problem, but figured I'd ask.
If you use the google webmaster tools and you look at the Crawl Errors is it giving anything specific?
I have about 2600+ 404 Page not found errors and almost all of them are llokoing for things in my old 6.5 install directory.
Also, while I try to figure this out I am trying a program I happened to have (I forgot about it) called GSiteCrawl which is a free site map generator that will generate a site map for the entire site for both Goggle, Yahoo and others. This will be the first time I've tried it, so I'm hoping it will help.
I do not pretend to know google - I am not saying it is the fault of threads at all.
My only concern is that I get as many pages as possible listed on google and compete with other sites.
My apologies if I added to any hysteria - not my intention
ditto for me too. as far as i can see, there is no major issue with the product in relation to google.
however, the the fact that some people -- rightly or wrongly -- perceive that they have a problem should be taken seriously and talked about to see what if anything can be done about it.
getting content listed in search engines is critically important to most forums. many forums provide invaluable information on a huge variety of different subjects -- often using language and example understandable to non-experts -- and as such deserve their place in the search engines.
thus we should not be shy about helping the search engines find what they need.
This morning I was looking at my "Who's Online" and noticed a Google spider.
I figured out something, maybe my "thoughts" on this will help out.
First, some background on my site, it is almost completely private. The only 2 forums viewable to the public are the rules and signup instructions and both of them are locked down so all you can do is read them, not reply or anything.
So, how long does it take for Google to scan your site? I mean, with out any posts there it should go quick, right? Wrong.
Google was indexing our site for about 1.5 hours. What was it doing? THE CALENDAR
This is perfectly fine by us, nothing is in the calendar that can't be public and helps us with Google rankings, so cool.
How this might help others and what I am guessing at.
Someone mentioned above that Google is no longer using multiple agents to fish/spider a site.
I can verify this by confirming that only one spider was on the site the entire time.
Here is where it might be of importance. When do they split off and spider other things? Do they ever make it past the calendar? In other words, if you have a large calendar, will the spider get confused and "stuck" in it with links back to pages it just visited? (ie Previous or next months OR going to multiple day listings with links to the other days).
The calendar is a major change (I love it BTW) from the previous version and maybe the Google spider is getting "stuck" in it. I know it was in our calendar for 1.5 hours and we hardly have any events in there beyond birthdays for 800 or so users.
Again, not that this is UBB's fault or anything, just an observation of what MAY be happening.
Also, we do not have the Google/spider friendly URLS turned on, but Google was in there for 1.5 hours.
A little description of what google does and several suggestions...
When google "hits" your site, it grabs new links and grabs content from the pages it was sent to do so; basically it does crawling and discovery at once.
Adding a SiteMap aids highly in discovery, since you're telling google what is there, and it knows what links it needs to crawl by your sitemap (it still does its own discovery, but it's hit and grab vs your feeding it valid links).
You can block search engines from crawling your calendar with a robots.txt entry: robots.txt:
As for "why you'd need a sitemap", I can only recommend you read the FAQ at google here (or read about my UBB.Sitemap generator here) as nothing i say can say it better.
Also, by using a sitemap, your links will be crawled regardless of SE links being on, as the links to your threads that are fed to the search engines (most major SE's now support sitemaps for note) will not "break" links, as you won't have to worry about most of the discovery (as you're telling them what links are there and are valid)
As for Ian saying he wants a sitemap for both his site and his forums, the UBB Sitemap generator grabs feeds live from your forum, and you can submit numerous sitemaps to google, so you could use alternate "link building" sitemap generators for miscellaneous site data.
Looks interesting enough, though several of those will just error out from a guest viewing them anyway (mark all read, my cookies, online, showprofile should you have guest viewing off)
It's amazing how often something so easy as robots.txt crafting goes un-noticed to people, yet it's such a powerful tool and easy to work with and requiring minimal reading to understand.
installing that robots.txt certainly made an immediate difference with the search engines.
besides reducing the total number of active spiders (esp. yahoo), the spiders left are now all engaged in indexing forums, rather than peripheral and unimportant sections of my site.
It is always better to ban spiders from going to places where guests are banned, as they will still spider and file these pages - which means you will have several 'you do not have permission to view this page' pages within the search engines
Just checked these forums "Whos on Line" and currently 209 anonymous.
But only 2 or 3 max from Yahoo "Viewing list of forums" Where as mine is almost 50-50 reading and viewing.
Its an observation thats all, as i can use as a possible reference upon my return. As Yahoo is reading 99% for this forum. And mine at the moment before robot.txt is 50%
Maybe its normal to be 50-50 but if no one say's no one would know??
BOOM !! Version v7.6.1.1 People who inspire me IsaacME Gizmo
Yahoo = 28 Viewing list of forums Yahoo Reading = 32 Reading a post in flat mode MSN = 5 Reading a post in flat mode Google = 1 Reading a post in X
And that's a normal afternoon for me, so i will update you next week if the robot.txt has worked for me ??
I cant any sooner as i'm away
Just FYI - I have had this for a while - at the moment I have 1 google (nothing recorded as to where they are looking), 1 MSN (nothing recorded as to where they are looking), and 168 from Yahoo all eithin the last 30 minutes.
I updated the earlier example, the reason it had a ; was because had to manually enter the one line cas i deleted some other rules and deleted a smidge too much lol
Basil, you definitely have something interesting going on. You still have all of the old links in google from your 6.5 forum. You have a bunch of links to the new forum as far as to the general forum listing and the individual postlist pages. But you don't appear to have many new links to the new showflat script.
What we usually see is the old links eventually go away and google reindexes your new ones. For some reason, they are keeping all of your old links in the system. You have thousands and thousands pointing to the old showflat script but barely any to the new.
For example, do this:
site:britishcarforum.com +ubb/postlist
You'll see it has a bunch of links to individual postlist pages. But if you do this:
site:britishcarforum.com +ubb/showflat
You'll see that there aren't many listed at all. Your site appears to be the only one with this problem. Everyone else that has posted has many many links to the new showflat. I can search for distinct subjects from their site and they are listed in Google. Yours I cannot however. I'm not sure if your site is being penalized for something, or what. I know you had made the change to/from search engine friendly not too long ago, so not sure if it's related.
Well, now that some time has passed, and I have included a site map, I tried this again: site:britishcarforum.com +ubb/showflat and I STILL only have 5 threads show up and none of them - NONE -- are recent. If anyone can figure out WHY Google is not crawling my site I would sure be greatful! I used to regularly get 10-15 new members per day from Google, not it has been two days and ZERO new members. Could it be something in my security settings for my new server?
Basil, if you don't mind, could I possibly get the info to your googles webmaster tools that includes all of your crawl information? I'd like to take a look if I could. If you don't want to give out this info, I understand.
I Have recently moved my forums to a new Domain. So it was important to me to get my site under its new Domain name back into google as soon as i could.
Gizmo has been raving about the site map program he made, so it thought to my self (He seems like a nice chap) I think i will give it a go and see if it really does work.
The answer is YES
21 days after i installed the site map Google has listed my site under its new domain name with 6,000 + links. Not all my forums are public
It is fair to say what would have happened if i didn't have the site map installed? Well i cant answer that to be honest as I'm now listed. I like to think that it has helped in my situation where a Domain move for my forums.
The Site Map has worked for me, but if you have any questions about it functionality then please contact Gizmo via PM as i can only report back the results i have.
Gizmo's site map isn't free, but for my needs worth the money. You will also need a Google web masters account. It also works with Yahoo.
I have installed a site map (not Gizmos but a third party I already had) and STILL Google is NOT indexing any of my threads - I am pulling my hair out! I see Google bots (one at a time) that say they are "Reading a Post in Flat Mode" all teh time, yet NONE of the posts are showing up. If I do this search:
site:www.britishcarforum.com +ubb/showflat I get 2 results of threads that are very old. (Back when I first installed threads7). I have spider-friendly URLs enabled. WHat on earth might be preventing Google from indexing any of me threads? Could it be something in the basic server set up I have that prevents Google from crawling certain threads? Any thought would be appreciated. I installed Threads7 back in January and my membership growth has been declining ever since. I MUST fix this. Any help or ideas would be most welcome.
I think your query was trying to get all occourances of www.britishcarforum.com/ubb vs www.britishcarforum.com/bcforum; since www.britishcarforum.com/ubb doesn't exist it'd explain why you wouldn't be recieving anything.
When I do the querry for site:www.britishcarforum.com/bcforum, I also see 20,700 but NONE are threads - they are all from other parts of my site like classifieds, photogallery, etc. But NONE are from any posts in my forums.
If you do this query for this site you will get over 1000 hits (still very small as far as I'm concerned):
site:https://www.ubbcentral.com +ubb/showflat
That is looking for strings in the site ubbcentral.com that include the string ubb/showflat, which all threads have. But if youdo the same for my site:
site:http://www.britishcarforum.com +ubb/showflat you only get 2 results from tow very early posts on my site when I moved to Threadss 7. This SHOULD return any thread or post that has been indexed from my site.
But that is only one of two - yet ALLL of my threads look like this yet none NONE are being indexed. What sorts of things might prevent Google from indexing my site? I am wondering if it is something in my setup or maybe the fact that I have a link back to my "home" page www.britishcarforum.com in my main page? I dont know I'm grasping at straws. If I can't solve this pretty soon I may be forced to move to a different software package - I can't afford not to have people finding my site and like I've said, my new users from Google have dropped to near zero whereas I used to get many a day before I moved to T7. There has to be something about either my threads set up or my server set up, or something similar, that Google does not like. But WHAT?
I would however recommend that if you're going to use a sitemap program that you tell it not to crawl profiles, or member only content, as there is a ton of links to "ubb error" pages that are restricted/member only.
You may also want to filter out the calendar, as your sitemap creator and google will go off the wall TRYING to index it into infinity lol...
FYI, both of the sugguestions i've made (about blocking private data and the calendar) are both stock in my sitemaps script (literally all you need fed to google is the forum indexes and the thread links, it doens't really need much else...)
What I am wondering however is if your sitemap is possibly creating more links than what Google can handle, have you gotten any errors such as the "Sitemaps cannot be submitted which contain more than 50,000 links" message?
Mark, the change won't be noticeable immedaitely, likely after a month you'll see things start to get larger (keep in mind the sitemap is to ultimately shove their discovery bot to the side, and tell their crawling bot where exactly to look, so once it gets started it'll work well).
BTW, my rankings are only from 2 months of the sitemap (as I made it, dun dun dun, 2 months ago lol).
For me I have been running the new Threads since January and Google simply is NOT crawling ANY of my threads. I do have a site map and robots.txt file and Google is crawling my site, but just NOT the threads - zero, zip, nada since January. If I do this:
site:http://www.britishcarforum.com I get about 38,400 hits, but ZERO none are of my current threads set up. The threads that do show are for my OLD threads 6.5 install - I can tell by the directory that shows up. If I do this, to see just threads in my new directory/threads install:
I get exactly ONE thread returned. This is just weird. There must be something about the layout of pages under Threads 7 that Google just does not like - and I think we as a community owe it to ourselves to figure out WHAT is the problem so it can be fixed. One thing that is different with Threads 7 from previous version is that that main site index page is not the portal page or a forum page, but only a re-director to the forums. Also, when guests view teh forums, ther see the side boxes and I'm wondering if that "portal-style" configuration might be what is messing up Google? Just brainstorming here - any other thoughts?
I think the confusion comes from your search criteria.
We as a community has raised the issue that google is doing some strange stuff? As in Site:mysite.com Works in google.com but not in google.co.uk
Try This : site:britishcarforum.com = 38,700
So ive done some checking for you. And you need to think how your members will find your site?
There hardly likely to type into a google search box “site:http://www.britishcarforum +bcforum/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/”
They are how ever more likey to type in “britishcarforum.com” or “britishcarforum”
Now if they do that then your forum links along with all chat links etc will show up in google.
Searching at google.com Britishcarforum.com = 41,100 Go to the last page click on “repeat the search with the omitted results included.” you will see that your “
British Car Forum: Privacy statement Shows up in the first couple of lines."
Britishcarforum As Above but your home page is first place.
britishcarforum+showflat : 1,000
First one for me is “British Car Forum: 1975 MGB For Sale in Classified's”
========= When I do site:wikiwirral.co.uk I only get 1 result. But if I only type in “wikiwirral” in the search I get 13,000
Just a side note that my old domain is still being indexed by Google 2 months in now, and the files have all been deleted too.
Summary Google is indexing your site Basil. Its your search criteria that’s fooling you.
If the searches arnt showing the results you want, then you need to address that with your keywords etc..
If it was that easy we would all be doing it.
I hope that helps ??
BOOM !! Version v7.6.1.1 People who inspire me IsaacME Gizmo
I was trying to explain to him that his forums are there but there is a lot of pages that guests cannot access so theres a ton of "you do not have access to this area" messages; but he doesn't want to take my word for it so I gave up...
There were thousands of chat links too, and they were above the new forum new rankings, so i guess basil mate your just going to have to wait, and it will come good.
BOOM !! Version v7.6.1.1 People who inspire me IsaacME Gizmo
I think the confusion comes from your search criteria.
We as a community has raised the issue that google is doing some strange stuff? As in Site:mysite.com Works in google.com but not in google.co.uk
Try This : site:britishcarforum.com = 38,700
So ive done some checking for you. And you need to think how your members will find your site?
There hardly likely to type into a google search box “site:http://www.britishcarforum +bcforum/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/”
They are how ever more likey to type in “britishcarforum.com” or “britishcarforum”
Now if they do that then your forum links along with all chat links etc will show up in google.
Searching at google.com Britishcarforum.com = 41,100 Go to the last page click on “repeat the search with the omitted results included.” you will see that your “
British Car Forum: Privacy statement Shows up in the first couple of lines."
Britishcarforum As Above but your home page is first place.
britishcarforum+showflat : 1,000
First one for me is “British Car Forum: 1975 MGB For Sale in Classified's”
========= When I do site:wikiwirral.co.uk I only get 1 result. But if I only type in “wikiwirral” in the search I get 13,000
Just a side note that my old domain is still being indexed by Google 2 months in now, and the files have all been deleted too.
Summary Google is indexing your site Basil. Its your search criteria that’s fooling you.
If the searches arnt showing the results you want, then you need to address that with your keywords etc..
If it was that easy we would all be doing it.
I hope that helps ??
Sigh!!! - Ok, I know my "site" is showing up. What is NOT showing up are any (or at least not very many) THREADS from teh new Threads 7 install. Any posts that DO show up are from the OLD threads. If you see anything in the directory www.britishcarforum.com/ubbthreads/anything THAT is from my OLD Threads 6.5 install which now only re-directs to the new forum.
If you can show me more than 3 or 4 fram way back in Jan then I'll believe you. But I am not seeing ANY (well a couple from Jan when I first did my install).
I was trying to explain to him that his forums are there but there is a lot of pages that guests cannot access so theres a ton of "you do not have access to this area" messages; but he doesn't want to take my word for it so I gave up...
Gizmo, it's not that I don't want to take your word for anything. Let me try one more time - I KNOW that many links from my overall SITE are showing up. What are NOT showing up are any (or not very many) actual THREADS from my NEW Threads install (Threads 7). I guess I am not being clear in communicating this problem. Let me try this once more: I am not seeing any links show up in Google that are from actual threads from my NEW install, which has been online since December (except maybe 3 or 4 from way back in January).
(in the bcforum directory and with "showflat" in the URL)
So now do you understand what the problem is? It is not that there are NO links to my site in Google, it is that there are no NEW THREADS (key word - new) showing up in google. I have 29787 topics on my forum, but they are NOT being indexed since I moved to Threads 7. With Threads 6.5 they were indexed. Now they are NOT and the fact is, I used to get dozens of new members every day from Google searches, but now I am lucky if I get 2 or 3 in a week!
So, if you want to convice me that I'm wrong, then do a Google Search and then post more than 3 links here are from the search results which point to actual threads in my new install. They would look like this:
I'm going to prove you wrong by doing a simple test? I'm proving you wrong in a helpful way, meaning if you do the tests you will get the same results.
Your last gripe seems to be that anything pre January would not show up?
Your Forums British Car Forum » Forums » British Automobiles » Jaguar Topic : Unloading E-type torsion bars Date : 12th December 2006
Google search "Unloading E-type torsion bars"
Searching with ( "" ) on that topic and not individual words.
British Car Forum » Forums » British Automobiles » Jaguar Topic : "Paint question XK150" Date of that post is 01/27/01 12:20 AM by Basil
That is showing up in google and that's on your last page, and there all pointing to THREADS v7
We are at there mercy we can only do so much, you are being listed basil, but it will take time for the new links to climb through. As ive mentioned i still have results from my old domain name in google and they have been deleted from the server, but google lists them.
I guess what's happening is either the old links that you have posted on other site are more popular with google at the moment, but in time your forum posts will climb.
I did find it amazing on one search to see this thread above alot of other links lol...
As frustrating as it is to wait, we are all in the same boat.
p.s. You didnt say if i got a prize for finding anything older than Jan
Can you find ANY such posts newer than January (when I did my Threads 7 Install) is Google? I'll be thrilled if you can, but I bet you can't.
Regards, a Frustrated Basil
Enjoying a challenge >> off i go to do a google on some of your newer threads
Hope i'm not wrong
I hope you're not wrong also. I would LOVE to be shown that NEW threads (since Jan 07) are being indexed.
Mark, you mentioned doing this search:
Quote
britishcarforum+showflat : 1,000
First one for me is “British Car Forum: 1975 MGB For Sale in Classified's”
Ok, but LOOK AT THE DIRECTORY that first thread is in - it is in www.britishcarforum.com/ubbthreads - THAT IS MY OLD Threads dir from my old Threads 6.5 which I have not had since December 06. If you click that link it will re-direct you to the corresponding thread in the new install - but no new threads from the new install since I did the change will show up, these would be in www.britishcarforum.com/bcforum/....
See how many (newer than Jan) threads you can find that are in my new threads dir www.britishcarforum/bcforum and are actual THREADS (e.g., with showflat in the URL)
Mark, you just proved my point, sir!! Look at the URL - that is pointing to "postlist". Click on the link - it only takes you to the list of threads NOT to a thread itself. That is what I have been saying - the THREADS themselves are not being indexed (they used to be with 6.5). Look at the URL you posted - does it say "showflat" in it? No, it does not, it says "postlist". Click on that link when you do that Google search. Does it take you to the thread, or just to a list of threads? Answer - it does not take you to a thread, it only takes you to a list of threads. That is what I have been TRYING to say - Google used to index every one of my actual threads, but now it goes NO DEEPER than the list of threads - NONE of my actual threads since I moved to Thread 7 are being indexed. Are you getting what I'm trying to tell you yet?
Basil
Conclusion: My Threads themselves are no longer being indexed. To prove me wrong, post more than one THREAD that is from my NEW Threads 7 install. To be sure it is a thread and is in my new install, it must be in the directory www.britishcarforum.com/bcforum and have showflat in the URL.
No my mind is NOT at rest because what you are showing me are links to thread titles - in postlist. Show me in Google that any actual Threads content is being indexed. With my OLD Threads install, the actual Threads were being indexed. But what you are showing me is that the titles in postlist are being indexed. I already know that! What is NOT being indexed is the content of the threads themselves BUT THEY USED TO BE!!! That is a huge difference! In your previous example, you posted results from a search that pointed ONLY to a list of threads, to to an actual thread itself.
NONE OF THE ACTUAL THREADS IN MY NEW INSTALL ARE BEING INDEXED AND NONE OF THE URLS THAT POINT TO THE THREAD ITSELF IN MY NEW INSTALL ARE IN GOOGLE. You still have not proven me wrong. In my Old 6.5, when I did a Google seach, the threads themselves would show up such that if I clicked on a link in the Google search, it would take me to the actual thread...that IS NOT happening any longer.
I think somehow I am not being clear in what the problem is.
Google takes time to index post, i'm guessing but once it has your Topic titles then it will go one level deeper.
I hope you are right and that eventually Google will start indexing the actual threads, but so far it has not indexed ANY actual threads since I installed Threads 7 - none. (maybe one). But at least now you understand what I have been trying to say - that Google is not indexing my threads - it is going no deeper than the postlist. I will keep watching and if I eventually start seeing threads indexed I will be very happy, but so far that has not happened.
Ok, this is from back in Feb. Then do a search (with quotes) for "Is there a suspension fluid I can buy over the counter"
How many results do you get? Answer: none! The fact that it is working on THIS site doesn't help me. It is NOT working on My site and that is the problem I am trying to figure out. WHY! If it works here but not there, then it must be something in the way my site is configured compared to this site, or maybe my .htaccess or robots.txt file? I have no idea WHY it is a problem, I only know that it IS a problem and one that I MUST solve!
One topic! Ok, thanks for trying. I will wait one moth from THIS post and then lets see if any more besides this are indexed. With over 29,000 threads, there should be more than ONE or TWO that are indexed. But I will give it MORE time and maybe it will start indexing. Right now it is NOT (and I already knew there were one or two). If after a month from now there are not more Threads Indexed, then I know something is wrong with my site (or server)?
And by the way, that one example you posted is one in the non-spider friendly formate (I briefly had my threads in non-spider friendly mode as an experiment). Lets see what things look like in a month.
3 days ago? 22nd April 2007 - Google Cache date You can see the cache date in the green URL in the images. That may be one example but you did ask for one?
From what i can see 91 pages have been indexed on the 21st April, now that would make sense to me if you have been changing settings. Google has effectivley been Reset.
site:http://www.britishcarforum.com/bcforum is what I search, I recieve 35.2k pages; not one is from your old forum; a lot are your classifieds and some are your chat, and some other misc things, but there is forum data within...
Again, I am NOT looking at your old install's directory, I AM looking at the NEW install directory.
It's also good to note that google wont' just keep displaying items, after it hits a page limit it'll show the end of a search; i'd love to test it more BUT every time I go clicking new pages it flags me as abusing their servers and i get banned for an hour.
BTW, not all of the data I saw in google was SE friendly URLs, so your searching bcforum/ubbthreads.php/ubb won't show everything, try just searching bcforum like I posted above (be sure it's not filtering content otherwise it'll die well before showing all links).
In any case, no matter what I tell you I'm going to hear that I'm stupid and wrong, hence my refusal to post on this thread.
3 days ago? 22nd April 2007 - Google Cache date You can see the cache date in the green URL in the images. That may be one example but you did ask for one?
From what i can see 91 pages have been indexed on the 21st April, now that would make sense to me if you have been changing settings. Google has effectivley been Reset.
Again : your site is being indexed, any changes you make to day can effect the results 20~30 days down the line.
Ive helped as much as i want to now, hopefully in a month you will be jumping for joy.
Actually, I had my site in non-spider mode only briefly way back in Jan, so in fact I guess I can't explain that thread you posted since on that date since it would have been in spider-friendly mode. As for your help - thanks, I really do appreciate it.
I'm not trying to argue anything here or be difficult with anyone but the fact is, Google is not indexing my THREADS the way I had hoped and the result is VERY obvious. I have been running my site for seven years now and I know what kind of traffic I had been getting from Google searches and that has dropped to almost nothing since January. I will give it another month and then revisit this thread. If I still have little or no actual THREADS indexed then perhaps someone can hel me figure out why. If you are correct and I have lots more threads indexed, then you are correct that I will jump for joy. I honestly hope you are right.
Gizmo, I never ever said you were stupid - please don't put those words in my mouth. In the first place, I don’t talk to anyone like that, especially someone who I know is trying to help me – and I know that you are. But at the same time, I am pretty sure that I'm not stupid either (BSEE, MS Computer Science, MBa). I'm a 53 year old Senior Analyst who has been working on computers since they used vacuum tubes and magnetic ferrite core memory. I think the problem is simply that I am not effectively communicating my concern here. Yes, I know that SOME things in my new install directory are being indexed, such as post lists, classifieds, etc. But what is NOT being indexed (or not very much at least) are my actual Threads (yes I know that one or two are there – but that’s it). For example, if you do a Google on THIS site like this:
[site:https://www.ubbcentral.com +ubb/showflat] (without the brackets) this is a legitimate Google search that looks for any URLs that are in https://www.ubbcentral.com site and which contain “ubb/showflat” in the URL, which would ONLY happen for threads that are in the spider-friendly mode. So, when you do that Google search for THIS site you get over 1200 returns. But do the same thing for my forum like this: site:http://www.britishcarforum.com +ubb/showflat and it only returns about 2 links (or four if you show those omitted). If there were more than those few in Google, that search should show them just as it does for THIS site. My site IS in spider friendly mode and has been except for a very brief period back in January. Doing a search for www.britishcarforum.com/bcforum will show all sorts of links, that is a fact - but these are all (or mostly) things other than threads themselves. Even Rick agrees that there is something fishy going on with my site and Google (see his reply in this thread a few pages back).
Ok, so all that said, I am convinced that Google is not indexing my THREADS like it should be. Why this is happening I have no idea, which is driving me crazy. Maybe it is just that I am not being patient enough since it has only been about 4 months since the change to the new threads. I have heard that Google recently changed their algorithms, so maybe it is just going to take longer than I expected – time will tell. So, rather than beat a dead horse, I will cool my jets for another month and then see how many actual threads are shown from the new install. If there are significantly more than the one or two that show up now, I will be VERY happy. But if there are still only one or two as currently show up, then I will be convinced beyond any doubt that something is wrong with my site. I don’t think it it a problem with Threads 7 because lots of threads show up for this site. I am thinking it is something in the way I have my pages configured, or maybe screwed up Meta Tags, or .htaccess or robots.txt problem, or maybe even something in my server config. But like I said, I will drop the discussion for now and give it another month then reassess. Fair enough?
Cheers, Basil
PS: In the meantime, if I figure out a solution I will certainly post it here.
Well I certainly don't wish to step on anyone's toes here but is it possible that Google does not index your site on purpose ? I've heard that they can block sites based on their own discretion. Is there a way to find out from Google themselves if you're not being indexed on purpose or if they get errors from your site so they don't index it? Not saying this is the cause, just curious if it's possible to find out for sure directly from Google.
NT, I've heard about them blockin sites, but generally by violating their policies (such as search engine spamming like VW and BMW have done in the past)
You have a very odd redirect for your main page. It's using a javascript onload to redirect to the forums, and I'm not entirely sure that search engines will always read/obey the redirect.
You should sign up for the google webmaster tools to see if there is any info on errors, crawl rate, last successful crawl, etc.
AFAIK a lot of engines will not use a javascript redirect, they'll die on the page.
For a redirect, you could use a 302 redirect with .htaccess files, or the redirectors which came with the UBB.T7 importer.
Myself I have a 302 redirect in the old directory (/ubb/) forwarding all traffic to our new directory (/forum/) then I have the redirectors sitting in the new directory.
There are two redirect codes that the webserver can serve, 301 and 302; some will say 301 is the way to go; others will say the opposing, others like me say they work well in conjunction with eachother if you're *just now* redirecting content that's already in engines.
If you where wanting to create a redirect, open up your .htaccess file on the server (generally in your web root), if you have none then you can create a new one (make sure your FTP client can read "hidden" files, hidden files in unix/linux are prefixed with a ".").
I was using this (domain changed to suit) to redirect entries to the forum. It goes straight there without the main index page loading:
Quote
RewriteEngine On # Rewrite /index.php to /ubbt/ubbthreads.php for clubadventist.com only RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?clubadventist\.com RewriteRule ^index\.php$ /ubbt/ubbthreads.php [L]
AFAIK he wants to direct queries to his OLD install location to his NEW; not an index document to the forum page... that or i'm totally lost in the conversation :X...
They appears to be SE friendly URLs which are supposed to help a great deal. I haven't enabled mine, though, thinking all my old links would break -- does anyone know if they would, or would they get redirected?
GangsterBB.NET (Ver. 7.6.1.1) PHP Version 5.6.40 / MySQL 5.7.23-23 (was 5.6.41-84.1) / Apache 2.4.54 2007 Content Rulez Contest - Hon Mention UBB.classic 6.7.2 - RIP
As far as google is concerned, that's not going to make any difference. It basically gives the appearance of a static .html type URL, so it might be beneficial to some oddball search engines, but really it's just for looks.
Our experience with Eve bears this out. Yahoo will hammer a board with tons of bot threads. Google is much more resource friendly and only uses one, or at most 2 bots. They generally come and go quickly, never staying long enough to pound your server into a lifeless pile of molten metal. I personally wish Yahoo was better behaved, there's no earthly reason not to be. The amount of resources they use, as compared to the results they offer, is negatively balanced.
I also wonder if you're running google ads and if that has an effect. I looked, Stan, but didn't see a threads on either site in your signature. The one site with forums that I could fine was an SMF and was indeed running google ads. I don't think they have to actively bot your site as much or as often if you're participating in their ad program, do they?
Google has several major bots (Mobile, Standard, and Adsense) yet these three spawn at max 1-2 bot processes; whereas yahoo pounds you away at 8+ at a time...
Adsense does send its own bot through, but it's still friendlier than yahoo
Just for note: I be a moderator in a vbb forum (18.000 user) and can look into the who's online list. There is still one google bot online and a lot of yahoo and other bots. So it is not on UBB.threads that only on google bot is online. Seems Google has changed something general.
... i've got far too much invested in it now. but it would be reassuring to know that this issue was being taken seriously, and that plans were in place to try and address the problem.
![[Linked Image from navaho.infopop.cc]](http://navaho.infopop.cc/progress.gif)
