"Lo-Fi Version" bad for Google?

[markus99]

Does people actually use the "Lo-Fi Version". I am afraid that this duplication of content is bad for your sites rankings in Search Engines. Can the "Lo-Fi Version" be turned off?

[atomicknight]

I doubt that Google will penalize you for it. If you've ever searched for specific forum topics, you'll see that Google groups the normal and lo-fi versions together. Besides, IPB already duplicates topics in many more ways - if you're that worried, then you're going to have to do a lot more than just disabling the lo-fi version. Example: http://www.google.com/search?q=+site:forum...+Or+Xeons%3F%22

[markus99]

Are there any serious working mod's out there to make IPB more Google friendly? I know there is at least one, but I am afraid it will only to mess up the board and give me problems with future updates. Why is it so hard to get information on IPB search engine optimalization? Doesn't people care about this rather fundamental question?

[Watty]

Actually, any modification you add to your current board "could" cause problems for future updates.

IPS forums has a Google PR of 8, so I'm not sure what you are driving at. More specific?

[markus99]

vBulletin has got vBSEO, and it seams to work fine. It seams that some sites with vBulletin with vBSEO perform better with Google. I like IPB, but the lack of search engine optimalization concerns me.

Can the "Lo-Fi Version" be turned off?

[Jason H]

Use a robots.txt file to block robots from viewing the /lofiversion directory.

[bfarber]

There is communityseo for ipb which is the vbseo equivalent. There is also one called minerva someone is working on, but don't know what it can (or will, since it's beta) do. SEO is a hot topic, of course. Out of the box, however, IPB can get spidered as well as any dynamic site really.

[markus99]

Tank you staff guys. robots.txt was a nice tip.

Do you recommend to stay away from SEO-mod

[bfarber]

Tank you staff guys. robots.txt was a nice tip.

Do you recommend to stay away from SEO-mod's in order to maintain a long time healthy forums site?

Well, it's no different from any other mod, but you do have to edit IPB's php files and maintain them during upgrades, yes. ;)

[markus99]

Well, it turns out that God, ehh, I meen Google loves us anyway.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com...te-content.html

"(...) However, we prefer to focus on filtering rather than ranking adjustments ... so in the vast majority of cases, the worst thing that'll befall webmasters is to see the "less desired" version of a page shown in our index."

[Im4eversmart]

I've known the guy working on Minerva SEO for a long time now. Might want to check that one out ;)

[Jason H]

I've known the guy working on Minerva SEO for a long time now. Might want to check that one out ;)

I tracked down a bear of a bug the other day with that.. Apparently with Minerva, the "New PM" popup will not work on the main board index page.

Think I saw someone mention that Minerva was beta.. So.. One of those things to watch out for.

Anyone who installs mods should be reading through the support topic for the mod prior to installing it. I've had mutliple instances of mods causing other problems when they're installed correctly.. Not to mention the even higher number of problems when they're installed incorrectly.. You get an IPS Driver Error and we look and the error is something like "Table ibf_army_attack doesn't exist".. Don't try to convince us that it's an IPB problem.

I know there's a Bouncy radio mod that kills (or killed) the online list... And there WAS a mod that overwrote all the information in the conf_settings value field.. But think that's been fixed now and I don't remember what it was anyway.. But both of those problems were documented in the support topic... So, someone who read it before installing would know in the case of the radio mod.. Hey.. Don't install it if you're concerned about the online list working, and on the other one.. Don't install it, period.

[Axel Wers]

Does people actually use the "Lo-Fi Version". I am afraid that this duplication of content is bad for your sites rankings in Search Engines. Can the "Lo-Fi Version" be turned off?

In my case (rather in case of my forum) lo-fi files are better indexed than 'classic' php files.

:)

[kirov]

google likes simlpe urls not long and with characters like: ?#
so lofi version should be more google crawl friendly
i don't know why IPB don't want to realese theyr own friendly url mod coes many people look to make theyr community more SEO to have more users the come from google search
of course it will help them at saleing it, coes looking at a customer who wants a forum and he needs to chose between IPB and vbulletin, he looks at what ipb offers and what vbulletin offers, and he sees SEO url feature in IPB, of course he will choose IPB, no one is keen on paying an excess of 150$ for a product

i think is just stupid to pay for a seo mod the same price as you pay for the forum

[WoLeRiNe`]

vBulletin has got vBSEO, and it seams to work fine. It seams that some sites with vBulletin with vBSEO perform better with Google. I like IPB, but the lack of search engine optimalization concerns me.

Can the "Lo-Fi Version" be turned off?

in the IPB SEO software, there is a setting for this;
"Block Lofi Pages"