No Google indexing

[wolfgangm]

In january 2022 I transfered my rather old VB/Photopost-forum to xenforo which worked technically fast and easy. The forum consists of about 120.000 entries (media, posts) and was rather popular before, it had hundreds of Google Top 1 positions and was very well known and often cited in my country. Before it had more than 1,5 M impressions per month, in may 2022 I had 120 impressions.

Since I changed to Xenforo, it lost almost all Google search results and reached only 407 readers since. My average is 5 visitors per day, and after 6 months Google indexed 5176 pages, about 50 pages per week. So it might take many years until they crawl the entire forum.

I would be happy on an advise what is going wrong here?

Thank you

Wolfgang

 

[Alan_SP]

First thing I can think of, are you using same links as before?

 

[VBX Co]

@wolfgangm what is your site URL?

 

[wolfgangm]

Thank you for your kind advise!

The URL is:

SAGEN.at-Forum-Fotogalerie

Forum zu Themen der Volkskunde, Kulturgeschichte, Regionalgeschichte, Technikgeschichte und vielem mehr - Fotogalerie für Dokumentar-Fotografie bis Fotogeschichte

www.sagen.info

I forgot to mention that I made a domain change when I set up xenforo.

But the strange thing is, that lot of search engines pass by (I blocked the chinese search engines via robots.txt), only google rarely passes by (compare attachement).

site:www.sagen.info/forum lists 5270 items instead of 120 K at google at the moment after 6 months.

I am sure it is my configuration error, but I need any idea where to search?

Thank you for your help

Wolfgang

 

[wolfgangm]

Screenshots Google Search console before and after installation...

 

[Mr Lucky]

You don’t mention at all how you have set up redirects.

Ie from the old domain to the new and from the vbulletin irks to the xenForo urls (presumably via the xenForo vbulletin redirect addon?)

If for some reason those aren’t working then however much you get crawled now, you will have lost many valuable back links and have broken internal links.

 

[wolfgangm]

Thank you Mr. Lucky! I really didn't know, that xenForo redirect addons exist, there was nothing written in the manuals. Yesterday someone sent me a note on doing that. (Will do this after concert in Munich on sunday, don't want a risk before the show)

This is htaccess on old domain sagen.at which is the main gateway of my plattform:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !on
RewriteRule ^https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]
rewritecond %{http_host} ^sagen.at [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ https://www.sagen.at/$1 [r=301,L,nc]

RedirectPermanent /www.sagen.at/forum https://www.sagen.info/forum/

ErrorDocument 404 https://www.sagen.at/error.php

Thank you

Wolfgang

 

[Mr Lucky]

OK well if the url redirect is working but still no vbulletin redirects then no back links will work properly. Ie they would go to the corresponding link on new site but it won’t work until you have the vb redirects.

Once those are in place test both backlinks and internal links.

Google should then recover your site value.

 

[wolfgangm]

Thank you Mr. Lucky!
I will try on monday.

Wolfgang

 

[Mr Lucky]

Thank you Mr. Lucky!
I will try on monday.

Wolfgang

You’re welcome

BTW your logo is squeezed way to small on mobile view.

 

[wolfgangm]

Thanks again!
Concerning the logo: thought it's the measures of the manual, will check later again. It's not the biggest problem when there are 5 visitors a day
It's a little disapointing, we have many thousands of exclusive and unique cultural items online, but don't reach the interested readers.

Kind regards

Wolfgang

 

[bzcomputers]

The main issue here is likely your "Domain Change". If not done correctly, in Google's eyes it is like you started a completely different site, even if you setup redirects.

Move a Website and Change URL | Google Search Central | Documentation | Google Developers

Learn how to change the URLs of existing site pages, including domain name changes. Explore moving a website with little impact on search results.

developers.google.com

Change of Address Tool - Search Console Help

Move your site from one domain to anotherAbout this tool Use the Change of Address tool when you move your website from one domain or subdomain to another: for instance, from example.c

support.google.com

 

[wolfgangm]

Thank you very much bzcomputers!

My domain change seems to be another fault by me. Unfortunately I cannot use the Google Change of Adress tool, as I seperated only the folder "/forum" to the new domain. The tool is working only if a complete domain changes, but not for a subdirectory.
Hopefully this might be of interest for later readers.

It seems to me, there is only a chance in the xenForo redirect addon and wait another months if google indexer speeds up sometime...
A little bit frustrating.

Many thanks to all helping hands

Wolfgang