Hi Carlos,
I have a very successful forum and have never used any SEO products or Friendly URLs. Content is the most important thing.
You have a successful forum because your site is old enough to stand on its two feet. Not many newer sites can stand on two feet - so SEO solutions are available to those who have a big problem gaining new members.
I don't have a problem creating new content, but rather being found on google. I am a writer for god's sakes. I believe that content is king, I agree. And I also believe that quality will bring new people to your site, and unique marketing schemes. I have been marketing the forum on twitter, myspace, n4g, and facebook.
I'll go into more detail below.
Jesus christ, no it doesn't.
What the hell is your problem. Its people like you that persist and tell me something other than what I know. SEO DOES help, especially if it is a small site. I administrate a call of duty website and have seen tremendous growth from the owner's use of vbSEO. He put a lot of time, a lot of passion, and a lot of his skills to the test. He got rewarded with a really nice 1k members.
Google will get ANY URL, rewriting them does -nothing-. Its a myth, so quit spreading it.
If it was a myth, then Kier, and InternetBrands wouldn't champion the 'friendly URL' feature.
And if it was a myth, some sites would never have succeeded with SEO. Wordpress has a lot of SEO on it, and its easy to be found on google with Wordpress. So easy that it costs NOTHING to get hundreds maybe even thousands of users viewing your page. This year alone, I've had 3 thousand people see my blog, and the site has been running for over two years now.
But the forums, is a whole different ballgame, I can't even get members to post new content on the forums EVEN though that I have quality content and SEO. So now I have to rely on my blog to bring traffic. And I plan on buying and launching other websites to bolster traffic on my 'network' forum.
Now, whether google will get ANY URL or not is up in the air. I have tried the standard vbulletin URL system on my network forum...guess what? It didn't yield me any traffic. In fact, it went all the way back of the line on Google's ecosystem. Now, when I started using vbSEO on the forum, google came back more and more.
My view is this. The standard url system that andyB wanted - google doesn't know what the thread is about - so whatever keywords you entered into its "search" box, will only grab your content's words. But if you use a 'friendly url' of sorts...google KNOWS what the content is, and once you use a keyword, and its ON that url structure, it slurps that keywords right out of the box. Snappy. This pushes your site a little higher. Because the word is VISIBLE.
And finally, most people that have the structure that andyB wants, and the standard vbulletin URL structure are paying HUNDREDS, and THOUSANDS of dollars every month JUST to get more visitors to their site via AdWords. You still have to do the same even though you have SEO on your site, but its much harder to run sites that have the structure, rather than the friendly url structure. Just because of what I just said. [Mostly because its a hit or miss kind of thing.] And most of these sites have to resort to finding donors to pay the bills - that includes adwords.
Before you say that I haven't tried AdWords on standard vb structure - I have. Didn't work.
I am very certain about my convictions about SEO in general. Otherwise if I didn't feel confident about the use of vbSEO or any SEO solution...I wouldn't be persistent as I am about it.