Invision Community 4: SEO, prepare for v5 and dormant account notifications By Matt Monday at 02:04 PM
BlowingWind Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 1. This is a suggestion for the IPB folks. 2. Seach is very important for the forum Search relying on mysql seach imposes heavy demand on CPU. IPB includes Sphinx as well but it is extra setup. 3. IPB should consider shipping a Google Local Search configuration for the built-in search. Google search may NOT be able to have so many options like differentiating seach in calendar/helpfiles/Forum. But Google Search is FAST and it does NOT eat your resources. 4. Can Add Bing Search for the Bing guys. 5. Currently I have got a "rudimentary" Google Search Replacement for my site. We have worked on the IPS SEO such that 90+% of my site is already indexed and searchable by Google. 6. The tradeoff with less exact search but faster search. My readers have voted for Google search.
Trones... Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 Hey. I've just started with IP.Board Some tips how google search can find my forum? It is very important to me that it should be possible and google search in my forum or a spec. matter the forum, when we are trying to reach out to many parts of the world that have the same interest as I have.
bfarber Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 1. This is a suggestion for the IPB folks. 2. Seach is very important for the forum Search relying on mysql seach imposes heavy demand on CPU. IPB includes Sphinx as well but it is extra setup. 3. IPB should consider shipping a Google Local Search configuration for the built-in search. Google search may NOT be able to have so many options like differentiating seach in calendar/helpfiles/Forum. But Google Search is FAST and it does NOT eat your resources. 4. Can Add Bing Search for the Bing guys. 5. Currently I have got a "rudimentary" Google Search Replacement for my site. We have worked on the IPS SEO such that 90+% of my site is already indexed and searchable by Google. 6. The tradeoff with less exact search but faster search. My readers have voted for Google search. I don't disagee this is a nice option for some forums, but many forums (such as our own) do not allow Google to read all areas, so you can have 90% of your forum not searchable by the search system. This is not a good situation for such sites. Hey. I've just started with IP.Board Some tips how google search can find my forum? It is very important to me that it should be possible and google search in my forum or a spec. matter the forum, when we are trying to reach out to many parts of the world that have the same interest as I have. What you are asking is a completely different topic from what the poster was suggesting. I recommend posting in the IPB technical support forum for assistance.
rgf100 Posted March 22, 2012 Posted March 22, 2012 Given how easy this would be to implement, I still think it's worth going ahead with. Yes, some sites will not have all content indexed - they can either not use it, or just make users aware. I've been running the Google Site Search plugin and do just that - everyone understands. You can't beat Google on search.
AnthonySh Posted March 22, 2012 Posted March 22, 2012 I'd much prefer a google site search as opposed to the current search system. For anything other than topics/posts, the search system is fantastic and works well, but it falls way short of google's search capability for posts - tonnes of irrelevant results makes it through, even if I search for text that appears in very few topics. Unless this is something that I personally am doing wrong, I feel that it'd be a big advantage to circumvent the search loads entirely and forfeit all the problems by using a google search.
rgf100 Posted March 22, 2012 Posted March 22, 2012 Actually I remember I posted about this , to lacklustre response. I still maintain this would be a smart move in terms of improved experience bang for your coding buck.
bfarber Posted March 22, 2012 Posted March 22, 2012 The suggestion is nice and yes for some sites it would work wonderfully. The problem is, for many (many...) users it would be basically unusable, as many users do not open up all their forums for guest access. It is hard to build a feature and then tell 50%+ of your custom base "you can't use it, sorry".
rgf100 Posted March 22, 2012 Posted March 22, 2012 Not having some forums open for Google indexing does not mean you can't use Google search. Stick a note next to the setting to turn it on reading 'Google Site Search will only return results that Google has indexed. Content that is very recent or not publically-viewable may not be indexed' and have a similar note on the results page. Job done. You might as well say the same users can't benefit from SEO improvements.
AnthonySh Posted March 22, 2012 Posted March 22, 2012 The suggestion is nice and yes for some sites it would work wonderfully. The problem is, for many (many...) users it would be basically unusable, as many users do not open up all their forums for guest access. It is hard to build a feature and then tell 50%+ of your custom base "you can't use it, sorry". It is after all, a feature, not a piece of core functionality. If it were the default or there was no option to get around it, then yes I'd agree with you. However the fact remains that it would be nothing but an addition, for the benefit of the <50% of the users that are able to or may want to use it. I agree with rgf100 in saying that as long as it is made clear that this shouldn't be used for sites with lots of private content forums that it'd be perfectly acceptable to include the feature.
Eduardo Bautista Posted March 23, 2012 Posted March 23, 2012 The suggestion is nice and yes for some sites it would work wonderfully. The problem is, for many (many...) users it would be basically unusable, as many users do not open up all their forums for guest access. It is hard to build a feature and then tell 50%+ of your custom base "you can't use it, sorry". Doesn't IP.Board already ship a lot of features that most people don't use anyways. LDAP anyone? I won't use the google search, but it can't hurt to make it a disabled feature that can be enabled.
Lava Guy Posted January 2, 2013 Posted January 2, 2013 Count my vote to this feature request. The built-in search sucks.
rgf100 Posted January 21, 2013 Posted January 21, 2013 The built-in search isn't ideal, but it's actually pretty good. If I'm in need of a specific topic, I'll quite happily use it if Google isn't turning up what I want for some reason. And some kind of local indexing is needed for non-public forums. But Google search would be a massive bonus, and I can't see how it'd be any kind of huge coding headache.
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