It seems to me like Google autodetects all forums that is indexed, and then it filters it out of all searches unless there is fewer than say 1000 results then they start showing all the forum posts (with special attributes like # of replies, author)... A long time ago, it was easy to get a forum PR 2-3-4-5, and at one point a forum I had was PR 3-- and then now suddenly that same forum has "no rank". To me it seems like Google is trying to de-emphasize forums because they are usually not great sources of information. What do you think? (Obviously I could be imagining things)
I think your imagining things, the forums I have are doing great. Only posts linked directly to will rank well though.
Well according to me everything *large* is see drop in PR Google penalization is shifting from Directories to Forums now !
Many forums are a good source of info - if you have good threads on your forum, then you will good traffic from google.
Although Google is making new changes, and but you can't be sure since there is no info on this provided by Google Yet.
This is right, I have some threads on various forums that are getting huge traffic because they have been linked to. This is also true, certain forums can be a great source of info, others not so, everything is relative. There are millions of websites which are CERTAINLY NOT a good source of info while others are. Same goes for forums. How old are your forums Sammy23?
I don't agree, the forums my friend runs has been there for almost a year now, and no PR. Why? In addition, the source of info is pretty good, there are thousands of posts and over a month ago we have been using Search engine friendly URLs...Yet nothing has changed. Yet the actual website (non-forum) gets excellent rankings and search engine love. it seems like only really old forums are getting any ranking. But even DP forums never comes up in search queries that might have the info.
I think Google IS treating forums in a similar way as Directories. So often people post just for sig links, get a few and move on. It's just another vehicle for spamming and passing PR. Would nofollow attributes in sig links help? Maybe, but I almost never see anymore, forum pages in the SERP's regardless of the site age and popularity.
Exactly this guy is noticing it as I am. In SERPs forums NEVER come up anymore unlike in the past years. And my forum and website both have great content, but website is instantly indexed and hits from google come, but for forum, nothing to very little... And months ago, it had the same PR as the site, now it has no PR, like WTF...
I do not understand the question? Personally, I see forums all the time in the search results. Regardless of what I am looking for, I see forums all the time and in general search results. There are some forums that have been online for 3, 4 or 5+ years, and they rank very well for what I look for , Personally, I think that too much focus is put on page rank. You should be looking at the sites age, not page rank.
I think authority is the key here, Google give much weigh if your site or forum are well known or visited by most people and always have fresh content.
Nope buddy.. That's wrong. I guess you are doing something wrong (in SEO) in your forum and that is leading to penalty.
Exactly right. What I noticed with a forum that I run is that if I'm getting back links regularly and posting plenty of new content I rank well. My page rank is only a 1 but I get decent traffic from google. So I think you might be putting to much emphasis on a website's page rank. I'm not saying pagerank isn't important but its not the only thing that goes into SEO or the only thing that goes into increasing search engine traffic.