Google and PHPBB Changed

[Frank_Rizzo]

Something changed recently with the way google indexed my phpbb site.

I used to have the site well saturated, with a peak of about 30,000 pages indexed. But in the past couple of years this dwindled down to a few thousand and I could not figure out why.

I believe the problem was due to supplementals and the reason for that was of the recuring boilerplate template in title and meta tags. Every page started with "Widgets from Outer Space - " and then the dynamic message title e.g. "Widget seen on Mars"

I changed that a while ago and have now noticed the supplementals are gone and that site:widgetfromouterspace.com has many more new pages indexed.

One problem though - G has changed the way it is reeading the page.

Now there are listings where the description is a combination of alt tags and info on the left hand menu.

e.g.

[u]Anyone see the Widget Last Night?[/u]
Widget Menu Widget Menu Widget Menu Widget Menu
Widget Menu Widget Menu Widget Menu Widget Menu
www. widgetsfromouterspace.com/messageboard/?thread=555 40K Cached Similar Pages

That's not very helpful to readers. What G has done is to ignore the text and just take the alt tags off the menu graphics.

In another problem G is showing the description from an info box.

I have an info box which lists times and channels of programs about widgets each day. This will change daily.

e.g.

e.g.

[u]Widget Measuring Stick[/u]
2pm BLUE WIDGETS 3pm WORLD OF WIDGET with Chuck Berry 8pmCET CRAZY LIKE A WIDGET
www. widgetsfromouterspace.com/messageboard/?thread=781 40K Cached Similar Pages

That is a big problem. G is correctly showing the messageboard thread title, but the description it is getting from the info box which is displayed on the left hand menu.

I guess the answer is to configure the messageboad not to serve the menu structure and info box - just feed it the threads instead.

But I've waited six months for this latest change, and will G see too much of a regular site makeover and penalise?

[Frank_Rizzo]

Reading some other threads here I have worked out why Google is using the menu structure as a description. If there is no meta tag, or the meta tag is too short it will take text from the body of the page.

Unfortunately google decides to use the menu structure as the description rather than the actual messageboard postings.

That's fair enough but why doesn't it do it on other site pages? And why has it only now decided to do this when previously it did not?

[g1smd]

Look at your meta description information first. It needs to describe exactly what is on that page.

[Frank_Rizzo]

Uh, I think I already said that :-)

The problem is that a while ago I had changed meta description to be pulled from the message title

title Blue Widgets /title
meta title Blue Widgets
meta description Blue Widgets

That sort of worked but sometimes the meta description was too short. But it was not a problem... Google kind of worked it out.

But recently Google has changed in that it has decided to stuff the description with either the alt tags from menu graphics

Widgets Menu Widgets Menu Widgets Menu Widgets Menu

Or an Info box in the left hand menu structure

2pm BLUE WIDGETS 3pm WORLD OF WIDGET WITH CHUCK BERRY 8pmCET CRAZY LIKE A WIDGET

Or in some cases use the actual link text of the menu

Widget Forum Widget Food Widget Home Page

[edited by: Frank_Rizzo at 8:21 pm (utc) on June 6, 2007]

[g1smd]

It needs to be a lot more than just a repeat of the title.
It needs to be a summary of what the page is all about.

[jdMorgan]

And once that issue has been addressed, consider adding

<meta name="googlebot" content="nosnippet">

to each page. Details [google.com]

Jim

[Frank_Rizzo]

g1smd - I know that!

What I'm trying to point out is that in the case of too small a, or total lack of, meta description previously G would take an extract from the body of the text.

Now it is taking text from alt tags, and text from the menu structure itself.

Why is it now doing that?

[tedster]

The area of snippet construction is a core focus for Google. It has a lot to do with satisfying their end users or not, so they do a good bit of experimenting -- especially in the cases where they don't get a meta description that matches the actual search terms.

It's always been a case-specific thing. In my experience, using alt tag content in the snippet has been an ongoing option for Google.

[thecoalman]

I have a phpbb forum and do not have this problem, however I'm using a suite of SEO mods. A search should bring you to them pretty quick.

They add the following:

1. Rewrite mod for zero duplication.

2. Unique title, meta description and meta keywords. The version I have was not truly unique because each additional page of thread would have the same title and description. I modified the mod to add the page number. Not a huge difference but better than nothing. Additional pages don't seem to do so well anyway on any forum.

3. Google Sitemap generator.

FYI, if you have any intentions of upgrading to PHPBB3 this is an active supported mod so the transition will be painless as far as that goes.

[Frank_Rizzo]

coalman: upgrade to phpbb3 I think would be the best - one change in one hit.

Disappointed to see that (AFAIK) phpbb is only described as bot friendly in that it identifies bots and serves data / sessions accordingly. It still does not rewriting of urls or seo in general. You still have to apply add-on mods.

SEO features should have been in there as standard. Big goal missed there I think.

[thecoalman]

coalman: upgrade to phpbb3 I think would be the best - one change in one hit.

I don't know if you are referring to me or yourself. This thread reminded to me look to see if the phpbb3 version was released yet, I just looked and it came out the second. It should follow the same naming convention as it did for phpbb2. So for me it won't be a hit at all, at least as far as the URL's are concerned. < off to test>

On side note, phpbb3 is using a different naming convention for the topic URL's so a stock install is going to create even more duplication since the old URL and the new one will both work.

SEO features should have been in there as standard. Big goal missed there I think.

I know there are some minor things they should have done but as stated by the developers they wanted to keep it lean and mean as far as features were concerned. That's the right approach IMO, add things as you need or want them.

[Frank_Rizzo]

Yes I meant myself - best to go for one big change now rather than a few which could further upset google.

---

I tell you, two years ago I had phpbb2 perfect. 30,000+ pages indexed - all correct looking in serps. That was with able2know mod.

But google changed something and the saturation plummeted and I got zillions of duplicates. A year later I changed the meta format and that sort of helped with the supplemental problem.

This week I thought I had it sussed again but seeing those serps descriptions of

Widget Menu Widget Menu Widget Menu Widget Menu

made me want to retire to an internet free island.

phpbb3 rc1 is out now. I read that you have to install in a fresh directory then run the import routine. This will leave you with two working versions one of which you can delete / rename as necessary.

Job for Sunday.

[hyperkik]

I tell you, two years ago I had phpbb2 perfect. 30,000+ pages indexed - all correct looking in serps. That was with able2know mod.

But google changed something and the saturation plummeted and I got zillions of duplicates. A year later I changed the meta format and that sort of helped with the supplemental problem.

As compared to "years ago", Google has significantly changed the way it indexes forums, particularly with the advent of the supplemental index, and from what I have seen it is much better at detecting SEO-modified forums and applying its "standard rules" for how a forum should be indexed, based upon the forum software. (SEO-friendly forum links still help, in my opinion, with link-building and user-friendliness, both of which can boost traffic over time, but are otherwise of very little value to how your site is indexed.)

[Frank_Rizzo]

I find it strange that google would wish to penalise forums which are trying to give the best information to search engines!

A stock install of phpbb2 is surely a nightmare for se's and users searching for information - it is also a goldmine for spammers.

phpbb out of the box has too many internally linked connections to superfluous stuff such as user profiles, users last posts, topic last post etc. The links to who's logged in today, and all the other stuff such as memberlists is what makes message boards have a bad name.

So I spent years making changes to my message board to make it more friendly for SE's. Now I have the crazy situation where thousands of pages are indexed

Widget Menu Widget Menu Widget Menu.

Why bother!

[theBear]

Frank,

Google just sees pages of "something" it doesn't care if it is a bb/forum/blog or a page out of a Harry Potter book.

The algo part that bites is the shortcuts taken in determining what is duplicate and what is in anyway possible manipulation of ranking.

The reason that additional phpBB pages or any other forum software page would rank lower than the previous page is fairly simple to understand just from a linking stand point they are one level below the prior page.

Likewise I'd expect a change in a page's rankings to occur as the forum adds pages and the older ones drop further down the link chain all other things remaining the same (which of course isn't the case).

You have my sympathy in dealing with phpBB or any boxed forum software.

Now it is time to play phone tag.

[edited by: theBear at 4:57 pm (utc) on June 8, 2007]

[Frank_Rizzo]

I think I'll just drop phpbb completely. I did some research on v3 in relation to google rankings - basically it sucks.

V3 has not implemented any kind of SEO. In fact I was quite shocked to see phpbb's own forum serps have uninformative descriptions itself.

If I have to make one big change now it is just as easy to change to a new board rather than just upgrade to phpbb3.

[Frank_Rizzo]

I actually gave this a go. I liked the way Bots are identified and thus you can modify templates to include / exclude stuff with <!--IF IS_BOT--> etc.

Not only that but there are configurable permission rights for groups....

Which brings me onto a big problem for anyone using phpbb3 out of the box.

You really need to lock down the permissions of the bot group. What I discovered last night was a spammers delight. It was possible for me last night to masquerade as something else and

post ghost messages on the message board
email any user who had the receive emails option set

This was pretty shocking IMO. I did not just manage to do this on my own board, but on the phpbb community board!

Seriously. If you have installed phpbb3 you really need to lock down the bot permissions ASAP.

[edited by: Frank_Rizzo at 10:26 am (utc) on June 20, 2007]