ekool
Well-known member
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.
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.