XF 1.4 Xenforo Indexing Confusion / Problem

[Gautam]

Hello All,

We recently purchased Xenforo and implemented it on our 14 year old website, which was on vBulletin with VbSEO modification.

We migrated the forum in second week of February, this year.

We are currently facing a very unique issue, which is : all our posts are indexed in the following manner https://www.xyz.com/threads/12345/ and when we click on the link, it is forwarded to : https://www.xyz.com/threads/site-title-comes-here.12345/

When we search for indexed links of few popular sites like digitalpoint or xenforo the links indexed are as follow :
https://forums.digitalpoint.com/threads/hello-everyone.2799567/
https://xenforo.com/community/threads/8thos-navigation-avatar.32371/

I looked for the link structure in sitemap and no where we find this format : https://www.xyz.com/threads/12345/

Can anyone from xenforo team guide us what needs to be done and how.

This might be taking a toll on traffic to our forum.

Thanks in advance for all the help.

 

[Paul B]

Redirection is done first with the XF ID only, then with the full title, for example:
/forumdisplay.php?f=123 redirects to /forums/123 then redirects to /forums/forum-slug-here.123

This is to prevent a potential information leak (e.g. the title of non-visible threads).

I presume by 'indexed' you are referring to Google.
I just checked both of your sites and there is a mixture of old VB URLs and new XF URLs in Google - once Google updates the index it should all resolve correctly.

 

[Gautam]

Hello @Brogan Sir,

Thanks for your quick reply.

I presume by 'indexed' you are referring to Google.
I just checked both of your sites and there is a mixture of old VB URLs and new XF URLs in Google - once Google updates the index it should all resolve correctly.

Yes sir, by 'indexed' I was referring to Google. When you mention 'both of my sites', I presume you are referring to my actual sites which I have licenses for.
When you say 'once Google updates the index it should all resolve correctly' - does it mean that our sites too will be indexed with full-title, for ex : /forums/forum-slug-here.123 in future ?

Currently we are experiencing around 25% drop in traffic when compared to pre-XF implementation. Hence, worried a bit.

Redirection is done first with the XF ID only, then with the full title, for example:
/forumdisplay.php?f=123 redirects to /forums/123 then redirects to /forums/forum-slug-here.123

This is to prevent a potential information leak (e.g. the title of non-visible threads).

My doubt here is, how'll it be indexed in Google ? Will it be indexed as /forums/threads/123 or /forums/threads/forum-slug-here.123

W.r.t to Digital Point, the indexing in Google is with full title, where as with our forum it is indexed with XF ID only. Is this bound to change or should I make any configuration changes ?

Thanks again for your time,
Gautam

 

[Mike]

This is just down to how Google handles 301s and it will get resolved over time.

 

[Gautam]

This is just down to how Google handles 301s and it will get resolved over time.

Thanks Mike.

So does it mean that traffic is bound to drop till then and can we expect it to pick up later ?

In sitemaps the format found is 'URL/forums/threads/forum-slug-here.123' but 'URL/forums/threads/123/' is getting indexed. The big question is - where is the search engine finding this structure - 'URL/forums/threads/123/' ?

 

[Mike]

It's related to the 301 redirection you have setup for your old URLs. They will redirect to the version without a thread title (to prevent information leakage) and then, once viewability is confirmed, they'll 301 to the correct URL. Google will process this in steps over time. The results where you see this will likely be places where Google has already indexed the old location and this is them starting to process the new location.

So does it mean that traffic is bound to drop till then and can we expect it to pick up later ?

No, not necessarily. I'm not sure what you're noting specifically with this would directly affect your traffic (there will likely be many other things which are more significant factors).