Why won't Google rank or display my forum

in any searches?

[PFOnline]

Hi, I'm wondering why my forum doesnt have a page rank, or wont come up in any searches... its simply not indexed by google.

The forum is an ikonboard forum, and the url looks like www.domain.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi

There are many things discussed on the board that I wish would be indexed by google, like the WebmasterWorld forum is. (If you search certain things on google, sometimes it will bring up a thread in the WebmasterWorld forum.)

Anyone know why this is? Or how to get my forum (and threads within it) to be picked up by google?

Thanks!

[Quinn]

Here's my guess. Search google for

ikonboard.cgi

and see how many errors are indexed....

[PFOnline]

Oh yikes, searched google for "ikonboard.cgi" like you said, and it said "Ikonboard CGI Error" on every page... My ikonboard is working fine though... But I guess I would have to start fresh on a new board if I wanted to get one that was "google friendly" right? Almost 100 members on my board now, wish I didn't have to do this.

Anyone else have any other suggestions?

Thanks

[sun818]

One reason it is not Google friendly is due to the session information being passed by URL (i.e. s=bfdbfdbfdbfd;). vBulletin has the same behaviour, but I think they have an option to save the session data to a cookie instead of URL. Also, it will help to put a link to the forum closer to the top of your HTML code. I notice that Google stopped crawling half way through some of my pages.

[chiyo]

Most people would have the cgi-bin directory barred to spiders, and if you are hosted, this may be by default. If you havent already check the robots.txt.

You may also want to consider having a very simple text only "entry page" to the forum outside the cgi-bin and use that to link to from your other pages rather than the cgi-bin. A short description of the forum and a prominant link to it. "Go to the Blah forum". This page should rank quite well.

[NeedScripts]

My ikonboard is working fine though... But I guess I would have to start fresh on a new board if I wanted to get one that was "google friendly" right? Almost 100 members on my board now, wish I didn't have to do this.

PhpBB

Once you download PhpBB, do search for *static pages* at the PhpBB Community and you will find a mod to make PhpBB static - use it,and you will have spider friendly Discussion Board.

Hope this helps.