XF 1.5 xenForo Google results fall behind vBulletin

[ekool]

We run a very large number of community sites (upwards of 200). We started moving a few sites over to the xenForo platform over the past few years and we do prefer this product over vBulletin.

However, Google prefers vBulletin. What can we do about this?

Here are a few examples to illustrate:
*) in google webmaster tools we receive notices about vBulletin patches that are available, we have not received any concerning xenForo
*) Google search results for a vBulletin forum landing page will have it's title prepended with the brand tag "Forums: ", xenForo titles are not.
*) We have started up sites in xenForo with SEO in mind, at the same time as a competitor starting up a vBulletin version. Our site shows more activity (traffic and posts), however the vBulletin competition's site still ranks higher in Google results. To be fair, in Bing we rank higher but the vast majority of our search traffic comes from Google.

The conclusion seems to be that Google is aware of vBulletin and not xenForo. Is there anything being done about this, or is there any interest in doing anything about this?

We prefer the xenForo product, but at the end of the day we are a business specializing in forum communities, so if our main source of traffic will always recognize vBulletin over xenForo then to remain competitive we will be forced to stop investing in xenForo licenses and continue with vBulletin. At this point any new sites we build are being done in vBulletin 4 for this very reason.

 

[Spiker400]

I managed to find one of the update notices that we hadn't yet deleted.. We've received many of these but only ever for vBulletin sites.

View attachment 118167

We also used vBulletin over years - but i not remember that we got ever any of these messages in GWT.
I don't think that these Messages are any quality sign or something like that.
I get my xf update mails directly from xenforo - not need to look to the GWT for this

 

[Chris D]

I definitely don't want Google to be sending messages like this out about XenForo:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2008/10/message-center-warnings-for-hackable.html

This isn't a good thing.

 

[ekool]

The last sentence of that, could you link us to the blog post?

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/11/new-software-version-notifications-for.html

 

[Paul B]

XenForo doesn't expose the version number.

That seems to be the only difference.

 

[Chris D]

That certainly seems to be more positive.

That's something we can look into.

 

[Alpha1]

The messages I received from GWT were neutral in tone.
I like that xf doesnt provide the version number.

 

[Spiker400]

The messages I received from GWT were neutral in tone.
I like that xf doesnt provide the version number.

I'm too.

The Update Notices about VB doesn't say anything about how by Google recognizing a site there are other signals like page structure etc. they use to find out that's a Forum or not.
I'm sure Google know exactly that a site running XF is a Forum.

 

[ekool]

I edited the post - I'll repost it here:

To expand on my point, somewhat, I know for a fact that the third or fourth result (for me, at least; it varies depending on whether it's .com or .co.uk) is a XenForo forum. And the only other results above it, aside from Apple's own forum, are XenForo forums. It's later down the list where there is a considerably busier, larger vBulletin forum.

So my point mostly is, can you consistently prove that vBulletin sites rank higher than XenForo sites? Or might it just be that there are times where, for whatever reason, Google ranks certain sites higher than another independent of the software they are running?

The closest we can come to proving it is with an example like the original post to this thread. As we all know, SEO has many contributing factors so it's very difficult to measure. For us, we're concerned about a pattern we've noticed on new start up forums. The forum itself does very well as far as new activity and legitimate posts, however competitor vB sites with less activity tend to get more results and better ranking from Google. Again, we haven't noticed this with Bing which also lends to the idea that Google is just more vB aware.

This isn't just a complaint about not doing as well as a competitor. We have also launched new vBulletin sites recently (ie// focusrs.org) which do very well out of the gate. We would like to see our xenForo sites do at least as well. We are far more impressed with xenForo as a product, but the number crunchers who watch the page ranks for our new sites are pushing for a return to vBulletin, and it is 100% due to vB competition getting a seemingly unfair lead on Google search results.

 

[Spiker400]

For us, we're concerned about a pattern we've noticed on new start up forums. .

If i understand right - the Forums you concerned about are all new ? If yes maybe you should don't wonder -> regarding the new-page Bonus period at Google ?

 

[Kevin]

Misc. thoughts....

• ecoboostmustang.org is running vBSEO which adds itemprop microdata tags which XF also does.
• The Google listing that has "Forum:" as part of the listing title was most likely grabbed from the "H1" tag on the that page. I'd be interested in seeing an example of Google adding "Forum:" to the title of page that already doesn't have that text in the content of the page.
• ekool is correct in that Google would sometimes show authors & post counts of forum threads. My own site when running vB 3.x (with no vBSEO or anything else like that and no microdata or, at least, none that I recall adding in) used to the show results. For example, searching right now for "+site:coolscifi.com" yielded the attached screenshot results. It'd be nice to see the same results for XF.
  
• I really need to do a 'change of address' process in Google.

 

[Chris D]

I like that xf doesnt provide the version number.

Seems that it would be a pre-requisite to be notified of software update changes.

This is in vBulletin:

<meta name="generator" content="vBulletin 3.6.12" />

 

[Paul B]

kool is correct in that Google would sometimes show authors & post counts of forum threads. My own site when running vB 3.x (with no vBSEO or anything else like that and no microdata or, at least, none that I recall adding in) used to the show results. For example, searching right now for "+site:coolscifi.com" yielded the attached screenshot results. It'd be nice to see the same results for XF.

Like this?

 

[Kevin]

Like this?

Why, yes, exactly like that!

 

[DragonFlames]

The only clear point that I can confirm is that Google doesn't give update notifications for xenforo while it does so for vbulletin and other software. This indicates that there is a difference between how google identifies xenforo and other software which could be worth looking into.

If I got a warning from Google to change my software like that I would not be thinking it was good myself. I often see people saying Google has stopped all their AdSense adverts running and so on because a Google crawl has spotted a risk at their site. Usually some sort of malware it seems. I suspect notices warning you to change/update your software due to risks are more about that sort of thing really.

I don't think such notices are ever good news really, or generally needed or wanted by XenForo users. I also personally don't want Forums to always show in front of my site in Web searches. The site contains forums but it also contains a lot more than that. Calling a site a Forum or worse a Bulletin Board these days seems rather dated to me and not attractive.

Personally my aim is to present the best system I can for my members. I think XenForo is streets ahead at doing that, and that is why I changed to it some years back.

Steve

 

[Weppa333]

I absolutely fully agree that XF results fall far behind VB results, I have similar websites running XF and VB ; some topics even have the same titles : and there is NO QUESTION ABOUT THAT. I can reproduce it anytime.
It's also the main reason why I'm not migrating my main website to XF...

 

[Alpha1]

Are the vb websites older and have more authority?

 

[Weppa333]

I even have migrated an "old and authoritative" VB ot XF with the same resulsts as everyone else here ( just search in this forum ) : SEO absolutely plummeted.
This has nothing to do with XF itself, which is an excellent software, from the original authors of VB.
It has everything to do with Google, that recognises VB threads and post processes them, and it does not do that for XF.

 

[Kintaro]

I even have migrated an "old and authoritative" VB ot XF with the same resulsts as everyone else here ( just search in this forum ) : SEO absolutely plummeted.
This has nothing to do with XF itself, which is an excellent software, from the original authors of VB.
It has everything to do with Google, that recognises VB threads and post processes them, and it does not do that for XF.

have you used 301 redirects and converted all the internal links, right?

 

[n00bsaibot]

That is a convincing theory and I don't doubt there's truth to it, however it does not explain why "Forum: " is prepended to the svtperformance example I also gave above which does not have a duplicated title on the results list.

Google prepends "Forums -" sometimes.

The "Forum:" is not them... it's in the H1 tag for the page.

 

[MstrfBlng]

Does anyone has a clue why some Xenforo sites are recognized as forums and other aren't? We migrated to XF last month, all has been indexed, but not recognized as a forum. While our competition, also running a XF forum is recognized as a forum and pops up in my Google Now with updates of that forum.

We had vB5 and also that was NOT recognized as a forum.