Any chance Google will index forum?

in the near future?

[PFOnline]

Hi, I suppose this is more of a question for GoogleGuy and the likes.

Any chance Google will start indexing Ikonboard threads?

Ikonboard is one of the most widely used message board software on the web.

The Ikonboard is well linked to and the main page is PR 4 and I've been running the forum with Ikonboard software for about 2 years, but no threads have ever been indexed.

...Or does anyone know how to make your Ikonboard "Google/Search Engine friendly?"

[netcommr]

I just hacked it to death, darn near a complete rewrite. going with a mod_rewrite to get simulated static urls in pages.

ask me in a month or so how G sees em...

[PFOnline]

Yeah, Ikonboard is good for community... Not so good for search engines.

But according to Ikonboard's home page it's the most widely used forum software on the web.

Wouldn't it be nice if Google got better at indexing ikonboard and other forum software's threads?

Surely it could add quality information to Google.

Or do we just have to wait for BestBBS to be released. ;)

[GoogleGuy]

The main question to ask are whether it requires session IDs, or has a url parameter "id=" that looks like it might be a session ID. Those are stoppers for most spiders.

I can ask around, but I think the one Ikonboard I was checking out recently had really long urls with session IDs. I could be wrong though..

[Stujoe]

I just went to a couple of them and they had ikonboard.cgi?s=3f120...

and that looks like a session id to me. I know that was the problem with my phpbb installation and I had to mod it to get google to crawl it. Don't know if ikonboard has mods for that.

[Net_Wizard]

I'm not sure about Ikonboard since I'm using Invision Board ;) but if you can remove the 'session id' from the URL, Google don't have problem crawling discussion board.

Just to emphasize, a session id does not necessarily mean an 'ID=' in the URL parameter, a session id could even start as 's=3f120... '(demonstrated by Stujoe), in fact the same with Invision, session start with 's=' and not 'id='.

And also to debunk the myth that Google does not index URL with 'ID' as one of the parameter...this is so false, Google does index URL with ID on it.

The main reason why Google(or any SE for that matter) does not crawl discussion board because the session id is in a sense is a 'spider trap'.

[PFOnline]

Hmm, now I just gotta figure out how to remove the sesh ID's from ikonboard, and all is good in the world. ;)

Any ideas?

Thanks all, by the way. :)

[toolkit]

There may be something here... [swarf.net...]

[Jesse_Smith]

session ID= Google death penalty
I had a vBulletin board for two years before I figured that out and got rid of the session ID. Get rid of the session ID in the URL and teach the visitors how to use cookies, or use mod_rewrite.