Google's new ranking system punishes forums?

[turtile]

When Google started to redo its search, my website began to slowly fall in the ranks. I was once on the first page of results and now I can go to page 10 and I still don't show up! Every other search engine shows me on the first page.

While Google claims that its new system helps find content, I did a search for something that is unique to my site. A few members wrote a huge page with diagrams describing the anatomy of a certain family of plant. It used to rank #1 when searched. Now it's #10!

...and the greatest thing about it all is the fact that my site is the only one that contains any content at all! The other sites only mention the term.

 

[trilogy33]

Localised searches and relevancy. Was that part of Google's project in Jan 2010 - "Cappunccino"?
My vB rating fell too (of my old site). It was #1, went down to #3. Didn't help with the new wave of less page counts because of "Quick Reply", but I wasn't that fussed at the time to be honest.

 

[Carlos]

WTF. Now, that explains why my vBulletin sites has seen a drop of activity. ******* Google!

Why can't you just leave things alone.

 

[trilogy33]

Ironically at the time, I'd just switched from vB3.8.4 to 4 RCsomethingorother

 

[Floris]

That's weird. I started building a site 3 weeks ago, got indexed and crawled within a day and listed publicly within a week. From the 15 million page results, the site is now listed on the second page in Google, overtaking some of the more known sites on the topic. And still growing when we're building content.

Microdata + Analytics inside XenForo, and simply building content and getting linked on other web sites .. almost a success story.

I can't say I share the experience.

 

[trilogy33]

That's weird. I started building a site 3 weeks ago, got indexed and crawled within a day and listed publicly within a week. From the 15 million page results, the site is now listed on the second page in Google, overtaking some of the more known sites on the topic. And still growing when we're building content.

Microdata + Analytics inside XenForo, and simply building content and getting linked on other web sites .. almost a success story.

I can't say I share the experience.

Yes for XF that's true, the "new wave" of indexing seems to have little to no effect.
Whereas, I cannot say the same for vB anymore. 'Coz I don't run it.

 

[Carlos]

I presently don't share the same experience with MVC3Forum. But my MW2Boards is on vb4 and the traffic has dropped significantly, I am now considering deleting that instance and move onto the next game in the series.

 

[trilogy33]

(this is all from experience and a little off the top of my head)
Without a little more in-depth research, I guess there could be many factors to hinder performance.
As the months rolled on Jan 2010 through around Jun 2010, I did notice a drop in pageviews (that's obvious from the "no-reloading-to-reply" (or Quick Reply)) - as the pageviews fell, so did the ranking.
I mean, not by much, but enough to make you start to wonder WTF is up.

 

[turtile]

That's weird. I started building a site 3 weeks ago, got indexed and crawled within a day and listed publicly within a week. From the 15 million page results, the site is now listed on the second page in Google, overtaking some of the more known sites on the topic. And still growing when we're building content.

Microdata + Analytics inside XenForo, and simply building content and getting linked on other web sites .. almost a success story.

I can't say I share the experience.

I've had the same experience when starting an XF site from scratch. It showed up on Google within 48 hours. But it's not the case for older sites (in my experience).

 

[AnthonyCea]

There are a lot of factors that determine your forums ranking now days, including outgoing links within threads if they are followed links, so this means that there should be little or none anchor text spamming within your database.

 

[0ptima]

A quick search in google for my sites does not show any change. Some have even gained a few notches.

 

[AnthonyCea]

Google has to 'trust' the domain, that takes time, great content, no SEO tricks and no Spammers dumping links in forum user profiles and threads.

 

[Sadik B]

I don't share the experience. I have a VB4 board that's seeing a %increase in SE referrals mostly google week on week. My board has heavy traffic and we get threads on highly searched technical topics being created everyday. In fact ever since the google's change of algorithm in Jan, my google traffic has jumped significantly. I have a feeling there's something wrong on the OP's site, SEO wise, hence the punishing by google. If you don't mind can u share the link here. I will suggest if I see anything.

 

[GofD]

I don't think the new algo actually punishes forums. If you read here: http://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...gles-new-algorithm-it-really-is-better/71720/, you'll see the results of some limited testing. Lots of forum admins that I know (primarily of big boards) have reported increases, not decreases, and as per usual with Google updates, better content is floating to the top.

 

[HydraulicJack]

Google has de-ranked my homepage and has pushed my Forum homepage (still vB... c'mon XF Gold!) to the first 3 pages (it varies from one of the three pages to the other) out of about 1.1 million pages ranked for my primary keyphrase #1, and same page range for keyphrase #2, out of 2 milliion + pages.

 

[turtile]

I don't share the experience. I have a VB4 board that's seeing a %increase in SE referrals mostly google week on week. My board has heavy traffic and we get threads on highly searched technical topics being created everyday. In fact ever since the google's change of algorithm in Jan, my google traffic has jumped significantly. I have a feeling there's something wrong on the OP's site, SEO wise, hence the punishing by google. If you don't mind can u share the link here. I will suggest if I see anything.

It's the third link in my signature. I guess it's taking more weight for linked pages?

Thanks for your help!

 

[AnthonyCea]

http://www.unusualplants.net/forums/

Nice forum and design too !!

How old is the forum now ??

Google might have you in what in the past was called the sandbox where new sites rank good then drop for a while until Google builds trustrank data on the domain.

 

[TNCclubman]

Their new algorithm punishes rss feeds to our forums. Something about punishing sites that republish content. I'll be turning off rss feeds from other sites in the meantime...

 

[Carlos]

Why, of all companies, is google not supporting RSS feeds? Especially if the company provides RSS feeds in some of their business solutions? That part, I don't get.

 

[trilogy33]

Why, of all companies, is google not supporting RSS feeds? Especially if the company provides RSS feeds in some of their business solutions? That part, I don't get.

Poss. because it takes very little effort to populate a board full of links.