Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Background
I posted a short time ago about the plight of wwwboards in Google (messages losing all PR and coming out the SERPs). I also posted on Google's webmaster forum and emailed Google (no response). So I decided to look for a new forum and found the problem is much, much greater than I thought which seems to turn what many say about authority sites on its head (that authority sites can get away with anything).
For example, I have just visited Invision's (forum and blog software write) own site, Invision Power; PR8 index page / Forums Invision Power; PR7 authority / PR7 and above right? Wrong, drill down (the Community forums there do not require registration) and you will see both blogs and forum messages are being given the big "Heave ho" by Google!
Preamble
Recently there have been posts about duplicate content bans affecting sites with multiple URLs to the same content;
example.com/
example.com/index.php
example.com/index.php?session-cookie-number
example.com/index.php&text-print-verion
In addition, many forums / blogs have "Powered by Widgetboard: Actual message detail" for their titles, etc.
Also, as we know, Google actively filters / penalizes anything that looks like a doorway page. Unfortunately, many boards use simple / simplified html for their messages (maybe just the fact messages have different html / navigation links to the main directory, etc. pages), which must appear to be dreaded "machine generated doorway pages".
In addition, as we also well know, Google actively filters link exchange pages. How does it do that? Well one easy way would be to look at the number of links to text ratio on directory pages. Unfortunately, many forums employ directory pages which seem to now be the wrong side of the line.
Plus, we also know that Google has made noises about ignoring certain pages on sites as the number of web pages growth wise outstrips Google's ability to effectively index every page.
Finally, we are all aware many forums and blogs are spammed rotten to affect search returns; Google may therefore have an agenda against many now.
Conclusion
I (and I suspect others) may now need to address this big time. My own forum used have all its messages indexed which I believe not just helped it but real Internet users as well, as these messages tended to rank for obscure 3 plus word search terms.
I saw some of these potential problems a while back when I experimented with Invision Board. I thought the URL's and Meta’s so unfriendly I had someone write "hacks" for the scripts (mapping to give the board SE friendly URLs plus specific titles and Meta descriptions). The problem with doing this is that it affects you ability to download updates as basically the developer who wrote your hacks has to start again. You also often face the problem of difficult to spot multiple URL's to the same content occurring.
Anyone know of good scripts available without hacks?
I believe forums and blogs now, to be Google proof need to offer;
a) Search engine friendly URL's
b) Unique Titles and Meta descriptions with no "Powered by Widgetboard" nonsense thrown in.
c) The same html (navigation links especially) as the main forum / blog directories.
d) Directory pages with a large proportion of text to links BUT without using the first words / lines of each message as snippets.
e) Directory pages with fewer than 100 links (to messages) - this is not essential IF you have other people linking to directory pages I have found, only if the directory page is simply that.
f) Main / index pages to list latest messages / blogs to get them into Google's index to start off with.
g) No duplicate URL problems (index.php, index.php?wherearemysocks, etc.)
Any additional essential element suggestions welcome.
I need new forum and blog software to get my messages and blog entries indexed by Google. Can anyone recommend some?
[edited by: tedster at 4:50 pm (utc) on Oct. 16, 2006]
[edit reason] use example.com [/edit]
