FURL

[Frontpage]

As far SEO experts go, I would defer to Matt Cutts from Google when it comes to what they look for in URL structure.

Stephan Spencer: OK.

Next question: what is excessive in the length of a keyword-rich URL? We have seen clients use keyword URLs that have 10 to 15 words strung together with hyphens; or blogs - we have seen them even longer there. A typical WordPress blog will use the title of the post as the post slug, unless you defined something different and you can just go on and on and on. Can you give any guidelines or recommendations in that regard?

Matt Cutts: Certainly. If you can make your title four- or five-words long - and it is pretty natural. If you have got a three, four or five words in your URL, that can be perfectly normal. As it gets a little longer, then it starts to look a little worse. Now, our algorithms typically will just weight those words less and just not give you as much credit.

[Ikadon]

Now, our algorithms typically will just weight those words less and just not give you as much credit.

I don't only use FURL for SEO but also for humans. "www.domain.tld/site1/article3" is just more logical to me than "www.domain.tld/include.php?path=blog/showentry.php&threadid=1365&entries=0&id=e4ef80735a7acf72cf508870517f35eb#post19612"

So basicall google doesn't care, it just doesn't weight those words as much as the first.

[bfarber]

Because changing an already established URL Structure causes a Search Engine to reindex which can take days and temporarily drop your positioning during that time. Considering the various big boards are likely to have been around for many years, it's likely they don't want to deal with the re-indexing process so they just leave it as is.

It's not the URL that matters, it's the content. They already have the content as well as the search engine positioning, so the URL is a moot point by that time.

Many big board owners I know personally have stated as such, as well as SEO experts. If you already have an established URL structure, you should not change it unless it's absolutely dire to do so.

Spot on.

As far SEO experts go, I would defer to Matt Cutts from Google when it comes to what they look for in URL structure.

"topic" in this case isn't part of the "post slug" referenced. It would be seen as a folder based on our URL structure, which is different. That would be like saying you MUST have your forums in the root directory, because putting them under /forums will make your URLs less valuable (which is of course not the case).

[ørret]

Why is this topic: community.invisionpower.com/topic/319352-furl/ when it could be community.invisionpower.com/319352-furl/ (this one look better, is /topic/ really necessary?)

Also, I use example.com/forum (for my forums), should I consider use forum.example.com/ instead? From SEO perspective, is there such thing as a "better url" when it comes to this? This forum use community.invisionpower.com and not invisionpower.com/community, is there any "brilliant" idea behind this? Just wondering! Thanks in advance.

[bfarber]

[quote name='

[Frontpage]

It's not the URL that matters, it's the content

To say that the URL does not matter when it comes to spidering simply ignores well establish published facts.

www.domain.com/text-text-text/

has more weight in the spidering algorithm then

www.domain.com/myforum/forum/topic/text-text-text/

This is called 'Directory depth'. Google algorithms discount the weight given to pages that are multiple levels down in a Web site’s directory structure.

I think people are confusing the difference between spidering and the benefits of using text in url structures. Two different topics.

"topic" in this case isn't part of the "post slug" referenced. It would be seen as a folder based on our URL structure, which is different. That would be like saying you MUST have your forums in the root directory, because putting them under /forums will make your URLs less valuable (which is of course not the case).

Google disagrees with you.

If you are an user of Google webmaster tools, you might have noticed that as soon as you get in your account you will notice a section called keywords to the right of your dashboard showing you the list of top five keywords which occurs on your site and it would also show you its significance level.

2. Google Judges Your Site’s Niche And Content Based On The Top 20 Keywords:

When search engines like Google looks in to your website, it judges your content based on the top significant keywords that occurs on your site, and also they rank you high for the terms that are more related those top keywords.

So, IPB now has thousands of boards who's top keywords are 'Topic' and 'Forum' which are irrelevant to the actual content of the forum.

[ørret]

Thank you bfarber. A question for you Frontpage after reading your post above, what is considered the "best" solution:

1. Having your forum in root. (example.com) (obviously the greatest solution or?)
2. Having your forum in sub domain. (community.example.com)
3. Having your forum as /community. (example.com/community)

"1" Is no alternative to me, but I am thinking of changing to alternative "2" from "3". It might just be down to preference as bfarber says, but how you rank these 3 alternatives (if they can be ranked at all).

So, IPB now has thousands of boards who's top keywords are 'Topic' and 'Forum' which are irrelevant to the actual content of the forum.

Actually I was thinking the same. But at the same time, I think it might be useful to easy see "where you are in the structure" /user/ /topic/ etc. If it's good for SEO or not I don't know, but I personally find this useful even though google doesn't. I know you don't need to be a rocket scientist to know you're in a topic and not on a user profile, but looking on a link like /144431-oerret/ wouldn't say if it's a topic or a user profile url.

[Robulosity2]

To say that the URL does not matter when it comes to spidering simply ignores well establish published facts.

www.domain.com/text-text-text/

has more weight in the spidering algorithm then

www.domain.com/myforum/forum/topic/text-text-text/

This is called 'Directory depth'. Google algorithms discount the weight given to pages that are multiple levels down in a Web site

[Guest]

To say that the URL does not matter when it comes to spidering simply ignores well establish published facts.

www.domain.com/text-text-text/

has more weight in the spidering algorithm then

www.domain.com/myforum/forum/topic/text-text-text/

This is called 'Directory depth'. Google algorithms discount the weight given to pages that are multiple levels down in a Web site

[Guest]

[quote name='

[Frontpage]

Google's algorithms are written by hundreds of engineers, many of which are top of the line experts in their field. Trust me, they can figure this "problem" out, and they're not stupid enough to make something this petty a major influence on your rankings.

Again, the discussion has nothing to due with rankings for content but spidering. I repeat, spidering, not rankings is the issue.

The content that is spidered typically ranks in the top search results, that is not the issue. Not complaining about 'poor search performance', don't know where you got that. Since, I don't think you understood my point, the issue is spidering.

Good quality content is useless if it is never seen because it does not get found by spiders.

There are many IBP forums that have tens to hundreds of thousands of threads yet only a few thousands actually get spidered.

Here is another fellow with the same issue.

[url="

If you check this very forum on Google and enter in:

 site:invisionpower.com community.invisionpower.com

It only returns, 33,500 results. Yet how many threads open to the public are available?

I have said my piece, I brought up an issue; you are free to ignore it.

[Connor T]

As for the results for this site, I think you searched improperly. Invision recently moved to that community subdomain, so that shows the lack of results. If you search with just http://invisionpower.com/community you get



yep, about 1.2 million. So I just posted to disprove the 33,500 results.

[Axel Wers]

As for the results for this site, I think you searched improperly.

You searched improperly ;)

You cannot use

site: http://invisionpower.com/community

It's bad syntax. In this case you get ALL pages where invisionpower.com was mentioned (so you get pages which don't belong to invisionpower.com domain). After "site:" you must put domain name, not blank space. Right syntax is:

site:invisionpower.com

In this case you get all indexed pages on invisionpower.com domain (including subdomains).

[bfarber]

[quote name='

[Axel Wers]

Yeah, I don't have any issues with /topic or /forum. Important - in my case - was to exclude unnecessary content from indexing, for example calendar. Soon after I excluded calendar from indexing, googlebot was focusing on topics. Nowadays I have more than 90% topics indexed (100% of forums)

[Intasar]

No one come to solution.

As usual, IP.Board fURL structure is the fine and popular structure which also offer wordpress, vBuillten and many other content management systems. the problem is IP.Board not provide the choice to users who can change their fURL structure easily.

now simple and best solution is also for good SEO. if you run forum from root so you do not need to change your structure until IPS offers more. but if your forum run from sub-directory, so i suggest switch it to subdomain. domain.com/forum to forum.domain.com.

one more fact here. every site depend on its subject. e.g Book, Fish, Poetry. so why you peoples used directory name as forum than your subject for example Fishing.domain.com OR domain.com/fishing/ which give you more visibility space in google ?

My opinion is, if IPS change its fURL structure so please provide a choice to admins who can also changed it URL to html format.

[Guest]

Everyone that helpfully posted a "site:" search for the IPS community forums got it wrong. The appropriate search would be site:community.invisionpower.com - Which returns 250,000~ results.

Additionally, you *can* use folders in site searches, which allows you to do site:community.invisionpower.com/topic/ - Where you can see we have 25,000~ results for topics on this forum.

Also, to clear things up for anyone who is concerned by posts in this topic, three directories deep (/forums/topic/123-blah/) is *never* going to cause spidering issues, due to directory depth or otherwise.

[Axel Wers]

The appropriate search would be site:community.invisionpower.com - Which returns 250,000~ results.

The same I got with site:invisionpower.com

There is probably important which local google do you use. google.com gives me 250 000 results, but "my" google.sk gives me about 36 000 results.

[-Blitz-]

Hi
I don't want to open a new topic, that's why I'm writing here. I'm not a programmer.
I'm trying to change furltemplate to have an url like this

http://domain.com/topic_title-id.html

'showtopic' => array( 'app' => 'forums',

'allowRedirect' => 1,

'in' => array( 'regex' => '#^/#i-(\d+?)',

'matches' => array( array( 'showtopic', '$1' ) ) ) ),

I have 2 problems here:
1) 'in' => array( 'regex' => '#^/#i-(\d+?)', I get an php error "[function.preg-match]: Unknown modifier '-'"
2) How can I add .html to have working pagination etc ($2)

Where can I change "page__st_"? I want to change it for something shorter like "s_"
Also, where can I find an array which replace topic tile into {__title__}? I want to change replacement for "." ("." -> "-" not "").

Thanks in advance

[bfarber]

You should post in the peer help forum here: http://community.invisionpower.com/forum/311-ipboard-technical-support/

[Axel Wers]

Where can I change "page__st_"? I want to change it for something shorter like "s_"

here