XenForo conversion review - 6 Months on.

[craigiri]

Here is organic search results for last 30 days compared to a year ago.
I also compared with two years ago to assure the integrity of the results.
We were on an up slope anyway - that is, they increased 15% the year before and now 23% after XF - main point here is that SEO results are at least as good...or maybe better. We've had a forum for almost 10 years, so data is fairly consistent.

 

[TheBigK]

Drop in page views directly affects the income and our advertisers care about the pageviews more than anything else. But we're now working on getting our page views to naturally grow to what they were before

 

[craigiri]

Drop in page views directly affects the income and our advertisers care about the pageviews more than anything else. But we're now working on getting our page views to naturally grow to what they were before

I understand that completely. However, in the end an informed advertiser usually cares about results....

I am looking closely, for example, at the google adsense results in the new forums...if they tend to be higher than before based on the same or fewer pageviews, that is a indication of more value.

Of course, I am headed toward semi-retirement mode anyway, so revenue maximizing is not as important to me as it was for the first 15+ years of my site. The driving force now is low hassle factor!

 

[lazer]

Oh and I also deleted all sitemaps from GWT and uploaded new ones.

what did you do to generate the site maps?

 

[craigiri]

Quick check of adsense ads inside the XF forum on our site shows 2X to 3X the response - so I suppose my theory about the ad NOT refreshing as much - but pulling better - may be true!

Revenues per 1,000 impressions went from 34 cents to 78 cents.

Of course, some of this may be driven by googles targeting improvements, etc - so it's important that we all keep an eye on the data and reports....

However, common sense does tell me that a longer residence time for ads (lack or refresh due to AJAX) would result in higher click-throughs.

 

[tafreehm]

what did you do to generate the site maps?

this => http://xenforo.com/community/resources/sitemap-for-xenforo.67/

 

[Steve10]

However, common sense does tell me that a longer residence time for ads (lack or refresh due to AJAX) would result in higher click-throughs.

Yeah I would completely agree with that, if people are exposed to an ad for longer, specifically if it is well targeted then they are going to be more likely to click on it. That's just a casual observation, I would like to do some research on my site but unfortunately google has been giving us some weird ads recently so it's not really the right time.

 

[MrC]

My site got hammered as well, but I think mainly because I lost thousands of links when transferred to Xenforo (CMS articles, blogs, albums, videos, photopost). But I decided to move anyway . It's OK now, it's back to the level when it was at peak and is growing.

 

[nrep]

Well we took a hammering in pure numbers. Simple as that. Whist we retained our google ranks and relevency in results, our pure numbers visitor numbers / pageviews got hammered. In the last few weeks they have started to climb back up, but still not to what they were before. Our returning visitor, pages per visit and time on the site are all up. So people are sticking around, but not as many are coming through the gates. Hopefully in 12 months this will have resolved out.

Hey Slavik, I was just wondering if you've got any results on how the traffic has gone since the switchover? I'm trying to find out how traffic has performed for large sites since converting and this thread popped up.

 

[Chris D]

Hey Slavik, I was just wondering if you've got any results on how the traffic has gone since the switchover? I'm trying to find out how traffic has performed for large sites since converting and this thread popped up.

Check this out:

https://forums.digitalpoint.com/threads/one-month-after-switching-from-vbulletin-to-xenforo.2637721/

 

[Grover]

Check this out:

https://forums.digitalpoint.com/threads/one-month-after-switching-from-vbulletin-to-xenforo.2637721/

Thank you for pointing to these statistics Chris. Digital Point must be the best business card Xenforo could ever wish for . It's really great (and motivating to buy XF) to see such a statistics.

 

[craigiri]

Hey Slavik, I was just wondering if you've got any results on how the traffic has gone since the switchover? I'm trying to find out how traffic has performed for large sites since converting and this thread popped up.

I'd be glad to provide some updates.....

We switched one year ago.

Here are the visitor counts for the 6 month period before the switch - and the same period one year later...
Note - the "bad" stats, which I actually consider good, are that we have fewer page views and shorter duration of visit. This is due to many factors, including the improved searching and menu items (view new, view unanswered). Our old forum reloaded two pages just to perform a search (in -between pages).
In terms of adsense revenue, I think we did about 12% more.....

 

[Slavik]

Hey Slavik, I was just wondering if you've got any results on how the traffic has gone since the switchover? I'm trying to find out how traffic has performed for large sites since converting and this thread popped up.

Actually what I had forgotten to mention, and will update, the drop in numbers was actually down to the Ajax loads, we are now what? ~18 months on, and our traffic is back up to "what it was" in raw numbers, but when you consider that an extra 12% needs to be added on in Ajax loads, our traffic was actually the same near enough, and has been growing.

 

[nrep]

Thanks for the update . It would be fascinating if you've got a graph of unique visitors over time from before the upgrade to the present day - as it would show how long it takes for things to normalise and then grow, although that may be a big as for stats from so long ago.

 

[Slavik]

Thanks for the update . It would be fascinating if you've got a graph of unique visitors over time from before the upgrade to the present day - as it would show how long it takes for things to normalise and then grow, although that may be a big as for stats from so long ago.

Unlike most websites, paintball related ones are highly volatile dependent on the weather and seasonal changes, the raw stats are kind of missleading if your not in the relevent industry and have important days and poor weather accounted for... none the less...

 

[nrep]

Fantastic, thanks for posting that Slavik!

 

[Slavik]

Fantastic, thanks for posting that Slavik!

Heres something more relevent, actual posting on the site.

Blue = Vbulletin 4, 2011 -2012
Red = XenForo, 2012-2013

 

[DirtRider]

Well this sure answers some of my questions, thanks for taking the time to post this report