I noticed they are on page 5 of the search results for "Forum Software". I'm thinking they have a little penalty there. Either that or Google's algorithm is a failure for this search. I don't really care for vBulletin anymore (prefer Xenforo), but seems a little odd, huh?
One possibility is they have too many site wide links. Another is they are in with Internet Brands and their network was penalized, but I don't know. It is strange.
Didn't vB at one point link to themselves from footers? I believe they updated that but at one time they did link to themselves from one VB version. Chances are there are still hundreds of thousands (or millions) of links from these forums still which directly violates Google's TOS.
Hmm interesting. Not quite page 5 but I'm seeing them at #16 (Searching from St Louis). How long ago did they get bumped down?
What is even more strange when I searched forum software just a moment ago "Comparison of Internet forum software" by Wikipedia came at the top of the searches. Is that what we really need when we're looking for a forum software?? Man, this is some kind of parallel universe or something.
When I put in "forum software" vBulletin was the second paid ad, maybe that's the results google was looking for ? I have been seeing the same stuff all a crossed the board, for "wordpress" wordpress.org has been coming in under paid wordpress themes, local "website design" has been getting buried by yelp, yellow pages and other nonsense same with other google searches. Penalties ? or drumming up ad sales ?