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Just thought I'd share this with you


stoo2000

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Before classic index.php?showtopic after FURL.



But it is not sure that traffic dropped down because to structure change.




You're right, we don't know for a fact what is causing the traffic drops that people are reporting... But I'm seeing a trend that just like you, people switched from non-FURL to FURL.

I'm suspecting more and more that it has to do with the extra sub-directory being inserted into the URL, thereby dropping the actual content down one level in the URL structure, effectively reducing the importance/weight of the content page itself in the search engine algorithms.

If I wanted to rank for the keyword "cats", Ideally the best URL structure in order would be

1) cats.com
2) site.com/cats
3) site.com/sub1/cats
4) site.com/sub1/sub2/cats

etc...

When you switched to FURL, all of your content pages shifted down one level in the URL structure due to /topic/ being inserted.

Is it the cause? :unsure: I don't know, but I stripped /topic/ out of my FURL to be on the safe side.
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admin/applications/forums/extensions/furlTemplates.php



There you can make some changes (backup original file), after changes upload file via FTP to your server and recache FURLs in ACP. There is somewhere article about this editing in Resources but I can't find it.



No, not "where", I asked you "when"?
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Ah, I read faster than think. Soon after applying FURL. Original structure I used maybe one-two days.




Hmmm... :logik:

Did I mention that I hate Google?

That really doesn't make a lot of sense then. In theory, your FURL should have been better than the old dynamic URL's you were using prior to the upgrade... And since it's been a year since the upgrade, any de-indexed pages should have been re-indexed long ago.

I don't know why it is then that some people are getting killed when they switch to FURL???

Edit* Did you set your "Incorrect Permalink Handling" to 301 redirect?
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seems thetrend here is people altering the standard templates, that then loose se traffic...




If by "standard templates" you mean furlTemplates.php,

Post #14


Here is a random URL from his site:
http://www.clubpoker.net/forum-poker/topic/123888-le-lecteur-de-soundcloud-sur-club-poker/
^
As you can see, he has not altered furlTemplates.php
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This is very interesting. What kind of URLs where you using before the upgrade? FURL, dynamic?



Before upgrading to IPB 3, I was using CSEO with special URLs for SEO (this module was VERY efficient for SEO with IPB 2.3.x).
And for the migration to IPB 3, I've built 301 redirections, to avoid losing my traffic.

My forum is slowly recovering from these URL changes, but it is not as well referenced as it used to be.

But I'm pretty confident in Invision staff's knowledge in SEO to be sure that every new release of IPB will bring better SEO support.
They do a very very very good job.
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Thought I'd share my own experiences on our site ...

post-116929-068376900 1282731182_thumb.p

We started the site in 2007 and were reaching nearly 3000 hits per day from the search engines (and still climbing!), then we had to change host as our current one was dropping our site left, right and centre, so we did this around Feb 09. Things looked up, and we started climbing again. Then in September 09 (we were using CSEO from the start) we introduced a custom rewrite into CSEO given to us by the Admin on their forums. Basically this stripped out numbers from the URL, however we now consider this to be the start of a drop from the search engines as no redirect rules were in place.

This can clearly be seen as Sep 09 we dropped, then raised a few times over Oct/Nov 09 and then began falling rapidly into Jan 10 and have continued falling since.

In my honest opinion, the upgrade hasn't helped, but it certainly hasn't been the cause of our bigger issues it would seem, in fact I would go as far to say that although CSEO 100% helped our site, they have ultimately been the cause of it's death too with an ill-advised rewrite rule which the search engines have took offence to. I can only hope we begin climbing again as I'm now giving the site another month to improve otherwise I'll review the situation and either move to shared hosting which will probably do the site no good at all anyway, or close the site permanently.

We were on the verge of becoming an authority on freeware downloads, yet with the decline on the site it would appear many of the active posters have since left too.

Cheers
marko

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I wouldn't say it was a mystery as such, just the nature of the beast. For anyone who upgraded I think it's inevitable that a change in the structure will cause blips, Invision, as far as I can see, have made provisions to redirect URL's properly but as far as I'm concerned these days it's basically anyone's guess as to how the big search engines operate. I know of hundreds of sites similar to mine, they don't care about safety, they will list anything without checking for viruses or malware, they don't even have forums for users to raise issues, they are listed in most of the site security services as malicious (i.e. WOT, SiteAdvisor, etc) and you can barely see the details for advertisements, yet these sites are head and shoulders now above mine - and we're to believe Google when they say make content for users, not search engines?.

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and we're to believe Google when they say make content for users, not search engines?.




In one of my niches, one man has a network of over 250 worthless 1-page spam sites that blanket all the keywords. They are all linking together like a classic link farm and yet he's #1 for all the keywords. He has dominated this niche for over 10 years now. His sites are absolutely useless with no useful info for the end user... They are all filled with adsense, paid ad spots, affiliate links etc, with hardly any actual content... The sites were made over 10 years ago by what appears to be a 10 year old kid messing around with notepad... They've never been updated.

Now, how is it that my website that has over 10,000 pages of quality content can't beat a one-page website filled with ads for a keyword that is in my domain-name?

So, I don't know how Google determine SE results, but it sure isn't based on quality content for the users!
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