Do these forums remove links?

[Help Desk]

I just did a Google search for "phpbb adsense". The 3rd result is a post that I made on these forums.
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1026

After looking at the cache of that page (http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:4bcx_qLCtIoJ:forums.digitalpoint.com/archive/index.php/t-1026.html+phpbb+adsense&hl=en), it appears that the links in posts here don't carry over to Google.

Is that true?

[l0cke]

The google cache link you posted is from the archive of this forum. Try this cache link instead: http://www.google.ca/search?q=cache:Dxruz-FENOQJ:forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php%3Ft%3D1026+&hl=en. Your cache link was obtained from here: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/archive.

[digitalpoint]

No, links are not removed. It should be no different between the cache and live version.

[compar]

ThinkBling,

What are you talking about? I checked the link you gave above and the links are all active in the cached copy.

You have a very quick trigger finger. It's like the AdSense question you asked earlier -- all you had to do is wait. In this case, did you wait long enough for the page to finish loading.

[Help Desk]

You have a very quick trigger finger...
I disagree... I am quick to ask a question when I am presented with different results than usual. The alternative would be to be quick with coming up with my own unedjucated conspiracy. ...but then you'd have to call me Anthonycea! :)

[compar]

I disagree... I am quick to ask a question when I am presented with different results than usual. The alternative would be to be quick with coming up with my own unedjucated conspiracy. ...but then you'd have to call me Anthonycea! :)
That's correct, but drop the paranioa. Just give things a chance to work themselves out.

In any case do you see the live links in the cached copy now?

[Help Desk]

That's correct, but drop the paranioa...
Nobody was accusing anybody of anything. It was just an honest question.

What is happening was that Google cached the archive of Digitalpoint's forum. The entry in the SERPs is actually for the archive. The confusion on my part came when I clicked on the result and was redirected not to the archive but to the live posting.

Another question that I have is, can the archive not remove links? Maybe it would be better to ask, is it worthwhile for DigitalPoint to change this? I believe that the forums will not have any postings deleted for a long while if ever, but a live link from the archives could be helpful.

Please don't take any offense to this posting. If you are I'm certain that either you are reading this message to critically or my writing skills don't adequately articulate my thoughts.

[digitalpoint]

Any page could show links if you want to spend the time coding it. But the archive that is used comes with vBulletin, and truthfully, I'm not going to go out of my way to code things just so people can have more links (why not just add everyone's links to the footer sitewide if I'm going to do that? heh)

Not only that, I would have to recode whatever it is every time a vBulletin upgrade came out since the archive doesn't use the vBulletin template system.

The archive's primary function is to strip out all the crap so the search engine can find all posts (since they link to the real posts) and also determine what the posts are actually about.

[mxlabs]

personally I love forum archives just because of the fact that it uses a very simple, readable design so you can easily distuingish between ads (banners,signatures,..) and actual posts.
plus there is a BIG FAT LINK to the real thread on top of the page, that should do.

edit: sorry for reviving an old thread, found it via the search and didn't bother to look at the date

[schlottke]

It did seem like an honest question - I was going to jump on TB, but then I reread his post and it seemed that he was simply wondering, not complaining.