"Google May 2020 Core Update" affecting your xF Forum?

diretur said:
I don't agree with that. I own 3 sites with big forums, all related to cycling, and they have been booming in the last month (see attachment, it's the mountain bike one). The nice makes the difference, and what people are searching for. It's always been like that with google, and that's why we never cared much about seo. If you care about seo (speaking for a content website, not an e-commerce one) you loose the focus of why you have an internet presence.

I think cycling is a perfetct example in the Covid-19 times, because people want to commute and practice without staying close to other people, and that's the reason why they are searching for bikes and cycling related information.

View attachment 227507
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Exactly. Some sites are up, including forums and including Xenforo sites. Others are down. This is not a blanket attack on forums or any specific platform.
 
That sounds like "guilty until you've proven your innocence".
I don't find anything on our side that would justify this downgrade. However, our content is millions of times from earlier times where there were other rules. To be punished in retrospect is a strong piece. We can hardly change hundreds of thousands of articles and topics after the fact.

In this context, your statements are a little offensive.
 
Masetrix said:
That sounds like "guilty until you've proven your innocence".
I don't find anything on our side that would justify this downgrade. However, our content is millions of times from earlier times where there were other rules. To be punished in retrospect is a strong piece. We can hardly change hundreds of thousands of articles and topics after the fact.

In this context, your statements are a little offensive.
Click to expand...
Who are you addressing this to?
 
djbaxter said:
Who are you addressing this to?
Click to expand...

To you and everyone who presents the changes that Google made as correct and claims that you have to / can simply adapt by making changes.

Perhaps it is the language barrier, because I also felt addressed by your statements, although I do not claim Google wants to take action against forums or the like.

The topic is
"Google May 2020 Core Update" affecting your xF Forum "
And that is very well the case with forums like ours, which always try to follow the rules as precisely as possible, only afterwards I can't change much.
 
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I think some of my comments are being generally misunderstood.

The points I am trying to make are
  • railing and ranting against the evil Google isn't going to help you or anyone else
  • suggesting that everyone switch from Google to Bing or Duck Duck Go is silly, given that Google has in excess of 90% of search
  • complaining that Google hates forums and is specifically targeting forums is simply not accurate and won't help anyone - not all forums have been negatively affected by the latest algorithm updates - some are flourishing and seeing increased traffic
  • engaging in conspiracy theories suggesting that Google is trying to force everyone to paid ads if the want to rank is also not accurate
  • what will help is trying to understand more about how Google ranks sites for specific search queries and trying to adapt as best you can to the changes Google has been making over the past few years - this is a new world in search and demanding that Google go back to the old one just isn't helpful
 
djbaxter said:
I think some of my comments are being generally misunderstood.

The points I am trying to make are
  • railing and ranting against the evil Google isn't going to help you or anyone else
  • suggesting that everyone switch from Google to Bing or Duck Duck Go is silly, given that Google has in excess of 90% of search
  • complaining that Google hates forums and is specifically targeting forums is simply not accurate and won't help anyone - not all forums have been negatively affected by the latest algorithm updates - some are flourishing and seeing increased traffic
  • engaging in conspiracy theories suggesting that Google is trying to force everyone to paid ads if the want to rank is also not accurate
  • what will help is trying to understand more about how Google ranks sites for specific search queries and trying to adapt as best you can to the changes Google has been making over the past few years - this is a new world in search and demanding that Google go back to the old one just isn't helpful
Click to expand...
Some of the critiscm against you has been unfair. ( as I know that uyou are just trying to help evryone)
But many of us feel that Google in descriminating againist our fourm (or forums in general)
Google owns Youtube (and we all know that Youube is censorsing many channels and demonetissing them after they have worked years to buidl up a channel)
That fact that Google does not show my fourm even on page 10, and yet it used to bounce around between page 2 and pgae 6) shows that something is wrong. My forum has not changed!
Google ranks blogs higher than my forum! and it also lists forums that closed years ago, and sites that are nto even forums!
So they need to up their game
 
djbaxter said:
Links from users are nofollow by default in Xenforo.
Click to expand...
I should have added this - that you should probably not rely on nofollow for links you want to "disavow":

www.seroundtable.com

The Google Nofollow Change A Ranking Change?

There has been some confusion, sorry to say it, around this nofollow link attribute change from last September. In short, Google made a change to the nofollow link policy, that starting on March 1, 2
www.seroundtable.com www.seroundtable.com

Google made a change to the nofollow link policy, that starting on March 1, 2020, Google can look at a nofollow link attribute as a hint and not as a directive. Google said in September they can use it as a hint for ranking and in March as a hint for crawling and indexing.

Google say we should not expect to see changes in search with this change. Currently, it seems like this is just a policy change and nothing was actually changed here - but it is hard to say. We know Gary Illyes of Google is working something up around this.

So when Google talked about its spam metrics in this new blog post, it summed up some of the nofollow changes.
Click to expand...
 
Following on from above
I believe they do discriminate against sites and forums.
I believe they do engage in censorship (American Politics)
And I do believe they rank sites based on advertising.

So in view of the fact that Google never publish HOW they rank sites.
I am not going to spend hours trying to play their games to get a higher rnaking

Bing and DuckDuckGo put my forum on page 1 in the top 2 or 3.
So how can you defend Google?

There is no way to contact Google and ask them to remove some of the old or irrevelavent fourms that come up in the first 10 pages.
So on that basis they only way to get back at them, is to stop using them and to promote other broswers and Search engines.
And to tell people as much as we can that Google are evll and censorign what they see.

Of course we all know that Google is by far the most popular earch engine.
But things can and do change.
Look at Word Perfect from top to nowhere in a year or so.
Look at Firefox from 68% to 12%
There are many other examples.
And there is no cost to the user to move.
Brave Browser is growing steadily.
 
The world doesn't revolve around you @DigNap15 . Google can do whatever they want with their website, just like you can do with yours.

Yes, it is a known fact that blogs (Wordpress) rank much higher than forums. And older sites benefit from being old. Many older websites and forums have nothing to offer these days, but they keep their high ranking because they are in the game for so long. They "own" very successful keywords and those make their sites valuable even though 99% of their website might be trash.

Your complaints about Google should be directed to them, not to us. We all are in the same boat here. We all have to live with that. It is a grinding game, nobody will rank you high because you think you earned it. People make money, serious money from all of this. People, who know how to trick the system, who are fighting over keywords you want to be ranked high. They don't care if their site is garbage or not. All they want is higher revenue and they will do everything to maximize their income. This is the real world out there, nobody cares about your forum or about all of us. Deal with it.
 
Your domain is only 142 days old, it needs to get some age.

How many of your threads/posts has Google crawled and indexed?
 
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rickhz said:
During the time I have been with Adsense I have removed some of the sites most popular threads because Google didn't like them. What kind of threads? Threads with photos of clothed women with cars, and humor threads. Threads which made the forum more of a community, the kind of stuff that forum's were once known for, and what drew people to stay on the site.
Click to expand...
Why you removed them?

By remove, I think you mean you removed them from your site completely of course.

I just move content like that (that Google from time to time flags as inapropriate, i.e. against its rules) to places where there's no ads. Google doesn't complain about this, they explicitly state I can either have content that complies and show ads there, or I don't show ads with content that doesn't comply.
 
ozzy47 said:
Your domain is only 142 days old, it needs to get some age.

How many of your threads/posts has Google crawled and indexed?
Click to expand...
Yes, but after about 60 days I was on page 2, then I started bouncing between page 2 and page 7.
Now I don't appear at all.
And they removed the byline I had in my Xenforo ACP
"Political Forum, New Zealand, American. Politlcal Polls etc"

I dont know how may of my pages they have indexed
I see their bots on my forum all the time.
But I do have a lot of one liner standup comedy rubbish posts on my forum.
 
sbj said:
The world doesn't revolve around you @DigNap15 . Google can do whatever they want with their website, just like you can do with yours.

Your complaints about Google should be directed to them, not to us.
Click to expand...
I am not addressing my compaints against XF members (just the ones who stand up for Google)
Do you have an email address for one of their CEO's? so I can email them? ;) :)

My World does revolve around me.
Its my froum that needs more exposure.
And the people in New Zealand need to be shown my forum exists if they serach for New Zealand Political forums!
 
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