SEO Rankings flying all over the place, and why is this..

[Steven UK]

So the robots.txt is not a solution then.

It would help if we knew how long these fixes are going to take to implement, or a patch or something, but I guess that is just not going to happen.

[Mikey B]

I would like to know a timescale for 3.4, please? Almost every new thread created is being sandboxed on my forum within 2 weeks, so time is an issue.

As always, the answer would be "When it's ready" :)

[Marcher Technologies]

good god why do i stick my nose into these.... not happening again... last time we got furls in a place shouldn't really have them anyway(you heard me, tags.... why the *** does google any crawler need to crawl search results of any kind?), and its clear I am not helping here.

[realmaverickuk]

Marcher, it all helps. Just sometimes a lot more to consider, than people realise.

SEO is like fire, you need to know exactly what you're doing or you get burned. All we can do, is offer our own experience and knowledge. Fortunately, as a group, we can find flaws and come up with best solutions.

[Steven UK]

Thanks for your input, Marcher.

As always, the answer would be "When it's ready" :smile:

I guess that answers my question.. although I actually cannot see why patches are not available, and instead a big, and complete new install has to be rolled out, taking much longer than a patch to fix a problem.

If there is an issue, as there is here, a patch would be ideal, and would satisfy a lot of issues.

If there are any Devs on here that would like to give me a price for completing this work/fix for me, please send me a private message on here. It would be much appreciated.

Thank you.

[Matt]

Steven, I've replied to your ticket and I've sent you a PM.

[realmaverickuk]

I must admit, I too think patches are a good idea.

Even if 3.3.3 is rushed out and includes the fixes for this particular issue, that'd be great. Waiting to 3.4 I feel will be longer than some have to wait.

[Axel Wers]

# is used to comment in a robots.txt file. Not block all robots.

As comment you can use it, of course. But not for disallowing crawling

Disallow: /#test

I accidentally added it to my robots.txt file and robots activity fell to zero.

[Matt]

When you're dealing with the FURL system, it's not really patchable. The fix may take in edits to a dozen files or more.

Regarding the sandboxing - this is quite interesting because I can't see any evidence of this on our forum.

For example, if you search for:

'maybe you could give us a change log?'


Page 1 and 2 listed as you'd expect.

Similarly, 'bring the TAB back' finds the first page of that topic on page 1 of Google, and page 2 on Google's page 2.

These are fairly old topics so they're past the 'week or so' cut off for the sandboxing Steven is seeing.

I just want to bring some focus back to this topic, really. I can improve things that will help but the growing panic over "Google de-indexes IPB!" patently isn't true. :)

[Steven UK]

Steven, I've replied to your ticket and I've sent you a PM.

Replied, Matt.

Thanks.

[Steven UK]

These are fairly old topics so they're past the 'week or so' cut off for the sandboxing Steven is seeing.

It is a strange one, because earlier threads are on the whole not affected, and it could be coincidence, but since we updated the beta 3.2, then the full 3.2 this is happening on almost every new thread.

[realmaverickuk]

.

When you're dealing with the FURL system, it's not really patchable. The fix may take in edits to a dozen files or more.

Regarding the sandboxing - this is quite interesting because I can't see any evidence of this on our forum.

For example, if you search for:

'maybe you could give us a change log?'

[img]

[/img]

Page 1 and 2 listed as you'd expect.

Similarly, 'bring the TAB back' finds the first page of that topic on page 1 of Google, and page 2 on Google's page 2.

These are fairly old topics so they're past the 'week or so' cut off for the sandboxing Steven is seeing.

I just want to bring some focus back to this topic, really. I can improve things that will help but the growing panic over "Google de-indexes IPB!" patently isn't true. :smile:

Hi Matt, I'm not sure whether topics are being sandboxed, but I believe it's a strong possibility due to the nature of the issue.

When doing any testing, you need to keep in mind, that not all pages/sites are treated equal. IPB has the advantage of a massive PR7 page rank, while PR doesn't mean great rankings, it means there are a lot of powerful links being pointed here, giving a LOT of trust.

Google will therefore be a lot more forgiving, trust me ;)

[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Page 1 and 2 listed as you'd expect.[/font][/color]

Well as you'd expect with the current issues. Not as you'd expect a thread to be displayed, right?

[Peter Parker]

When you're dealing with the FURL system, it's not really patchable. The fix may take in edits to a dozen files or more.

Regarding the sandboxing - this is quite interesting because I can't see any evidence of this on our forum.

For example, if you search for:

'maybe you could give us a change log?'

[img]

[/img]

Page 1 and 2 listed as you'd expect.

Similarly, 'bring the TAB back' finds the first page of that topic on page 1 of Google, and page 2 on Google's page 2.

These are fairly old topics so they're past the 'week or so' cut off for the sandboxing Steven is seeing.

I just want to bring some focus back to this topic, really. I can improve things that will help but the growing panic over "Google de-indexes IPB!" patently isn't true. :smile:

My forum has threads that are about 5 months old still on the first page of google, but it is not the main focus of the website. The things we want to be high on google, are non existant there. There are a lot of issues with google from my board, from the way the content is indexed and presented on google to no ranking at all. I am not blaming this on IPB though. Its probably my fault

Matt, I like your solution to fix the obvious problems a couple of pages back, and everyones input here too. I have been following this thread for a few days, and I think that this is exactly how a community should operate. I have faith in IPB, I wouldnt want to use any other platform.

Please keep up the good work, Matt and everyone else that posted here.

[Matt]

Thanks all.

This has been a very useful topic and I've decided on a course of action for 3.4 that should only benefit your IPB regardless of how you're currently treated by Google.

[realmaverickuk]

Great, can't wait to watch IP.SEO develop and kick VBSEO ass :D

[bfarber]

It is a strange one, because earlier threads are on the whole not affected, and it could be coincidence, but since we updated the beta 3.2, then the full 3.2 this is happening on almost every new thread.

This in itself confused me. If the software were patently at fault, wouldn't it affect ALL topics on your site? I mean, they're all being generated identically, with the same URL structure, etc. Upgrading to 3.3 wouldn't apply changes only to new topics...it would affect how any topic is served.

Anyways, for those asking how you can noindex page 2+, you could probably add this to your global template (inside the HTML <head> tag) if you were so inclined to test it. I don't personally recommend doing so, but if you want to try it, it is your site after all ;)

<meta name="robots" content="noindex" /> </if>

<if test="$this->request['st']">

[AlexJ]

It is a strange one, because earlier threads are on the whole not affected, and it could be coincidence, but since we updated the beta 3.2, then the full 3.2 this is happening on almost every new thread.

I think earlier topics are not affected because Google had already indexed them. After I updated to 3.3.x, I also noticed high increase in duplicate title and meta descriptions for same topics.

[Enkidu]

This in itself confused me. If the software were patently at fault, wouldn't it affect ALL topics on your site?

not just all of his topics but all IPB forums which is not the case. I told him what he should do but he decided to ignore my advice. So here it goes again. We are all not experts in SEO. The only place where you can get good advice is Google webmaster central. That said, no forum software in the world could help you rank better. Because ranking has nothing to do with the structure of the topic URL or the contents of the title tag. Genuine contents, good internal structure, and optimized user experience will turn to continuous increase in back-links and thereby ranking.

[Steven UK]

not just all of his topics but all IPB forums which is not the case. I told him what he should do but he decided to ignore my advice. So here it goes again. We are all not experts in SEO. The only place where you can get good advice is Google webmaster central. That said, no forum software in the world could help you rank better. Because ranking has nothing to do with the structure of the topic URL or the contents of the title tag. Genuine contents, good internal structure, and optimized user experience will turn to continuous increase in back-links and thereby ranking.

Garbage - with respect of course.

[realmaverickuk]

So here it goes again. We are all not expert in SEO. The only place where you can get good advice is Google webmaster central.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

I know more about SEO than almsot all of the idiots who troll that forum combined. It's full of idiots who are there for nothing more than to troll. To post their same generic BS, to pull people down and criticise them for stuff like basing their business model on Google etc. Hate that place.

You may think you know a lot about SEO, which leads you to believe I'm wrong in anything I've said thus far. But sadly, you're the one who's wrong.

[realmaverickuk]

Because ranking has nothing to do with the structure of the topic URL or the contents of the title tag.

That's part of your internal bloody structure. The url structures at least. And the title tag is massively important.

I'm not even going to waste anymore time debating. You're wrong, completely.

[Enkidu]

Garbage - with respect of course.

Sir, I just showed you my two websites. They don't have the issues you have. If YOU were the SEO experts, shouldn't my site be the one with all the issues and problems in the world?

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

I can back up my claims with evidences. Can you?

[Rikki]

Let's not descend into an argument about who's more experty please, especially on something so hard to quantify :)

[bfarber]

The focus of the topic was to look for improvements in IP.Board. Let's not start arguing about who knows more - eventually it will undoubtedly lead to the topic getting closed, which will help no one. :smile:

Doh, Rikki beat me to the punch.

[Enkidu]

Bck to the topic. Google has told us how to solve the multipage/series issue. here is a video (see mistake number three)

[media=]

I believe I got that implemented on my site the moment this video was out. So yeah, some of the suggestions I see here are actually SEO mistakes to say the least.