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should vbulletin archive be disabled?

Discussion in 'vBulletin' started by ugr|dual, Dec 10, 2005.

  1. #1
    by reading about duplicate content checking by google i thought that the vbulletin archive is in fact 100% duplicate content. if google indexes the normal pages well, that is.

    so i am thinking about a strategy to feed google the best and avoid duplicate content penalties. i use vbseo_sitemap to submit a ~1 million pages forum index to google sitemaps.

    should i disable submitting the archive pages?

    shoud i also disable google's access to these pages, leaving them usable for users?

    or should i disable the archive completely?

    any hints on this? well, thank you. :)
     
    ugr|dual, Dec 10, 2005 IP
  2. mdvaldosta

    mdvaldosta Peon

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    #2
    It's much better IMO to seo the site than to use an archive.
     
    mdvaldosta, Dec 10, 2005 IP
  3. ugr|dual

    ugr|dual Peon

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    #3
    i have not decided on adding an SEO mod. i just submit all pages to google sitemaps (vbseo has this free tool for it) and intend to see how that works out first.

    the forum is gigantic but has less than 100k pages indexed (it had near 200k but dropped a lot in the last 4 weeks) and PR is 'only' 4.

    that's the situation without anything done.

    i would like to improve on these values. one thing i am worried about is duplicate content. if it is checked on a per sentence or per paragraph basis, the archive could be a lot of trouble.
     
    ugr|dual, Dec 10, 2005 IP
  4. michaelbenson

    michaelbenson Peon

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    #4
    I personally keep the Archive pages intact, but make sure that vBulletin is actually to the actual topic and not the Sitemap version, to resolve the issue you pointed out of possible duplicate content.
     
    michaelbenson, Dec 11, 2005 IP
  5. ugr|dual

    ugr|dual Peon

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    #5
    i kept the archive alive (we have pda users who want it) and excluded it via robots.txt. also vbseo_sitemap does not include the archive url's anymore. will see how that works out..

    overall my impression is that google very badly indexes vbulletin forums. i don't know how forums like these achieve their indexed count, but would like to know. maybe it's our style or something..
     
    ugr|dual, Dec 13, 2005 IP
  6. GuyFromChicago

    GuyFromChicago Permanent Peon

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    #6
    Google indexes "stock" vBulletin forums just fine.
     
    GuyFromChicago, Dec 13, 2005 IP
  7. ugr|dual

    ugr|dual Peon

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    #7
    mmmkay we're pretty far away from the stock outfit. will return to a minimum modified style with vb35 upgrade.
     
    ugr|dual, Dec 15, 2005 IP
  8. joeychgo

    joeychgo Notable Member

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    #8
    The archive works well, especially on forums with graphic intensive skins. The best solution IMO is to not have a graphics intensive skin. I like to turn the stock archive into a sitemap, and add the vb easy archive (a hack at vb.org)
     
    joeychgo, Dec 22, 2005 IP
  9. ugr|dual

    ugr|dual Peon

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    #9
    while still using our graphical intense skin i experienced a major push in google presence from these works:

    - re-enable the archive pages for search engines but make them huge (250 topics per page, 250 postings per page).

    - hack the archive to display titles like this forum does, which basically strips the forum title and puts the topic in foreground.

    - re-submit archive pages via vbseo_sitemap, as well as all other pages.

    - and the main change: keep the forum title as short as possible. so the topics in title show up early. would be even better to strip the forum title completely or put it to the end of the title content, but that would be a bigger hack.

    got +100% indexed pages in 1 week. just wanted to share.. still working on more.
     
    ugr|dual, Dec 24, 2005 IP
  10. joeychgo

    joeychgo Notable Member

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    #10
    I recently made some new conclusions on this topic and wrote an article.

    If you want to read this article I posted it on my forum: Duplicate Content and vBulletin


    ~
     
    joeychgo, Mar 19, 2006 IP