XF 1.4 Question about forum arrangements - SEO and Google

[Divinum Fiat]

I'm a bit confused about the layers between what is a "forum" vs. what is a "category" and what Google actually picks up. How many layers deep does Google algorhythm search for relevant content to index a page/thread?

For example:

sitename
- forum name
- individual thread

or

sitename
- category name
- forum name
- individual thread

I'm assuming option 1 is much better for Google. However, the number of pages are getting overwhelming. About 2/3's of my forums are for upgraded members only. However, the upgraded forums are also set to visible and I use the "show limited number of words" add-on to show some things to Google. Does anyone know how many words need to be shown publicly for Google to index the page?

Is there a better way to structure this so Google can actually index the threads? Does Google index a forum set as category or only as a forum?

Do you have any suggestions as to how many threads are too many before you create a new forum?

Would love to hear how others are taking care of their structure.

 

[Jeremy]

Google will go as deep as it can in your site, by nature of following links. Amount of threads or category sub-forums aren't much help.

The difference between a forum and a category is that a category is a collection of nodes, a forum is a collection of threads.

 

[Divinum Fiat]

Thank you, Jeremy. Yes, I have both right now but for some reason I was worried that Google may not go as deep as "category-nodes-threads" and preferred "forum-threads." Good to know!

 

[Jeremy]

Google is a crawler, it doesn't distinguish between types of pages -- it finds content.

 

[Divinum Fiat]

Yes, but I'm assuming it can't crawl something that is not crawlable, like an upgradeable forum. How many words of text per url does Google need in order to actually crawl and index a page?

 

[Jeremy]

It will index your entire site as long as it can reach it:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/70897?hl=en

 

[Divinum Fiat]

Informative link. Thanks, Jeremy. Unfortunately no specifics on quantity of words. All it said was that it can't crawl "little content," but it doesn't say how many words "little" means.

 

[Jeremy]

You should be fine.