I just posted a new topic @ phpbb.com and i noticed it already has pagerank (1) How is this possible?
With the homepage of phpbb.com being a 9, and viewtopic.php being a 1, I think this is a clear signal that viewtopic.php is devalued by google (on all phpbb forums)
I did read that viewforum and viewtopic have something negative with google. I'm using mod_rewrite and my homepage has pr3, the index pr2 and some forums have pr2 while the others have pr1. I noticed that none of the forums @ phpbb.com have pagerank.
How would you figure this. PR is a mathmatical calculation based on the links coming into a page. Why would a .html page have a higher PR than a .php page?
since you are on the subject of phpBB I have a question. What are your (anybody's) thoughts on robots.txt and blocking parts of your forum pages like: /profile.php /memberlist.php /search.php and these and other types of forum pages that really have no content? I have blocked them recently because my site:ww*.mysite.com shot up from 9000 pages to about 45,000 pages and some totally useless pages are being indexed. Like those mentioned above that account for many thousands of indexed pages. (right after using google sitemaps - coincidence?) Anyway would you block these pages in robots.txt?
i'm not blocking the profile (maybe i should though) Memberlist is blocked. Search.php is needed because i have a link under the username on viewtopic to all their posts. I did that for the bots. I did a lot of things on my site actually. Removing the post reply, new topic and quote buttons for guests is also handy, bots don't need to index those pages I did some more things a week ago so i have to wait for the results.
Here is what I block in my main forum. Everything good gets indexed, and all the extra crap stays out of the index. User-agent: * Disallow: /admin/ Disallow: /attach_mod/ Disallow: /db/ Disallow: /files/ Disallow: /images/ Disallow: /includes/ Disallow: /language/ Disallow: /mycalendar_mod/ Disallow: /spelling/ Disallow: /templates/ Disallow: /common.php Disallow: /config.php Disallow: /glance_config.php Disallow: /groupcp.php Disallow: /memberlist.php Disallow: /mini_cal.php Disallow: /modcp.php Disallow: /mycalendar.php Disallow: /news_insert.php Disallow: /posting.php Disallow: /printview.php Disallow: /privmsg.php Disallow: /profile.php Disallow: /ranks.php Disallow: /search.php Disallow: /statistics.php Disallow: /tellafriend.php Disallow: /viewonline.php Disallow: forums/post-*.html$ Disallow: forums/updates-topic.html*$ Disallow: forums/stop-updates-topic.html*$ Disallow: forums/ptopic*.html$ Disallow: forums/ntopic*.html$ Code (markup): This list was compiled by some people that I would consider experts at optimizing a forum for Search Engines. Getting the SE's to follow your robots.txt file seems to be another task all together.
Jestep, That is great! I am going to apply some of the applicable parts of this robots.txt to my site tonight. I have many of those same pages that should be blocked. You are right about the SE's following the instructions though. I know 2 weeks ago I placed a disallow: to a form page and I know it was written right and that sucker got indexed on the 28th of October. Now did Google grab the page over 2 weeks ago and not add it to the cache until the 28th? I don't know that but next bot go around I will find out.
I wouldn't block the files folder though. Bots index the thumbnails of the attachement mod and it's usefull if someone searches for images The rest of the robots.txt looks top. Btw, i also noticed that you have to chmod it to 755. Did anyone else notice that?
I agree, but there are several mods that can be done that will eliminate sid's in the address bar. This way they can spider the whole forum, but they don't pickup multiple copies of the same pages resulting from the sid's. I would highly recommend this Mod for any forum. It makes the forum cleaner for humans and SE's.
I'm not aware of any phpbb viewtopic.php urls that have pagerank above 1, so I think there is some devaluation. If anyone has any examples of otherwise, it would be great if we could look at them together.
I like the way you did on "view next and old topic" links on viewtopic.php. Can you share the code with me? I'm also using keyworld url mods and I did exactly same modifications for bots as you did.
I have just hired someone to do some mods on my 2 phpBB forums - for SEO purposes. Does anyone have any tips? We are doing the archive mod and the SID removal mod. I have decided not to do the html/rewrite mod, because I don't think Google cares about the page extension. Anything else worth considering? thanks !
Sure # #-----[ OPEN ]-------------------------------------------------- # # viewtopic.php #-----[ FIND ]--------------------------------------------------- # // // Post, reply and other URL generation for // templating vars // # #-----[ AFTER, ADD ]--------------------------------------------------- # $sql = "SELECT t.topic_title, t.topic_id FROM " . TOPICS_TABLE . " t, " . TOPICS_TABLE . " t2 WHERE t2.topic_id = $topic_id AND t.forum_id = t2.forum_id AND t.topic_last_post_id > t2.topic_last_post_id ORDER BY t.topic_last_post_id ASC LIMIT 1"; if ( !($result = $db->sql_query($sql)) || $db->sql_numrows($result) != 1 ) { $nextTopicText = $lang['No_newer_topics']; $nextTopicLink = '#'; } else { $row = $db->sql_fetchrow($result); $nextTopicText = $row['topic_title']; $nextTopicLink = append_sid("viewtopic.php?t=" . $row['topic_id'] ); } $db->sql_freeresult($result); $sql = "SELECT t.topic_title, t.topic_id FROM " . TOPICS_TABLE . " t, " . TOPICS_TABLE . " t2 WHERE t2.topic_id = $topic_id AND t.forum_id = t2.forum_id AND t.topic_last_post_id < t2.topic_last_post_id ORDER BY t.topic_last_post_id DESC LIMIT 1"; if ( !($result = $db->sql_query($sql)) || $db->sql_numrows($result) != 1 ) { $prevTopicText = $lang['No_older_topics']; $prevTopicLink = '#'; } else { $row = $db->sql_fetchrow($result); $prevTopicText = $row['topic_title']; $prevTopicLink = append_sid("viewtopic.php?t=" . $row['topic_id'] ); } $db->sql_freeresult($result); # #-----[ FIND ]--------------------------------------------------- # 'L_VIEW_NEXT_TOPIC' => $lang['View_next_topic'], 'L_VIEW_PREVIOUS_TOPIC' => $lang['View_previous_topic'], # #-----[ AFTER, ADD ]--------------------------------------------------- # 'L_VIEW_NEXT_NAME' => $nextTopicText, 'L_VIEW_PREVIOUS_NAME' => $prevTopicText, # #-----[ FIND ]--------------------------------------------------- # 'U_VIEW_OLDER_TOPIC' => $view_prev_topic_url, 'U_VIEW_NEWER_TOPIC' => $view_next_topic_url, # #-----[ REPLACE WITH ]------------------------------------------ # 'U_VIEW_OLDER_TOPIC' => $prevTopicLink, 'U_VIEW_NEWER_TOPIC' => $nextTopicLink, # #-----[ OPEN ]-------------------------------------------------- # # templates/subSilver/viewtopic_body.tpl #-----[ FIND ]--------------------------------------------------- # <td class="catHead" colspan="2" height="28"><span class="nav"><a href="{U_VIEW_OLDER_TOPIC}" class="nav">{L_VIEW_PREVIOUS_TOPIC}</a> :: <a href="{U_VIEW_NEWER_TOPIC}" class="nav">{L_VIEW_NEXT_TOPIC}</a> </span></td> # #-----[ INLINE FIND ]------------------------------------------ # <a href="{U_VIEW_OLDER_TOPIC}" class="nav">{L_VIEW_PREVIOUS_TOPIC}</a> :: <a href="{U_VIEW_NEWER_TOPIC}" class="nav">{L_VIEW_NEXT_TOPIC}</a> # #-----[ REPLACE WITH ]------------------------------------------ # {L_VIEW_PREVIOUS_TOPIC}: <a href="{U_VIEW_OLDER_TOPIC}" class="nav">{L_VIEW_PREVIOUS_NAME}</a><br />{L_VIEW_NEXT_TOPIC}: <a href="{U_VIEW_NEWER_TOPIC}" class="nav">{L_VIEW_NEXT_NAME}</a> Code (markup):
Nice! Does anyone have any opinions on EasyMod? I think it can easily install that kind of mod, but I'm wary of this kind of thing!