Your results in Google are plummeting. vB5 is horrible for SEO.

[Zachery]

Submit a bug, the worst they can say is no. How are the sitemap urls different from the actual urls on the site?

Additionally, the defaults for the forumdisplay page are pretty bad. They do all time, but only 20 pages by default. You can't get more than 20 pages ever. Make sure you have it set to 30 days but no limit on pages. The date range can be changed, but the number of pages is set in stone (not end user controllable)

[Zachery]

Hey Zachery, the urls in the vBulletin sitemap are only different for those that use custom rewrite rules. It's not a big deal for new vBulletin customers but those who used older versions often rewrote the urls to their liking. that became a problem in the newer versions because vB choose the structure for everyone and told them to 301 redirect. Well....most people don't understand how to redirect and there are no intuitive tools on the net that swill do it for them. This gave rise to the issue.

I was able to fix this for myself by fixing the vBSEO sitemap which reflects my url structure. I needed to keep my url structure for a number of reasons. I really doubt they will consider this a bug.

If you used the default vBulletin url structure, it gets 301 redirected.

The mobile style is the same style in vBulletin 5, there is no mobile style. Are you positive its not an issue with the default style?

[Replicant]

It's a mobile style issue. The default mobile style is using bbtitle instead of thread title. I posted a template edit on the other thread http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/forum...90#post4322090.

[Maltair]

You might want to reconsider. Google uses the analytics data to know what pages are visited the most and ranks you higher in search.

Whether or not we have Google Analytics installed, which we do, does not affect rankings whatsoever. You may find some who claim that it does, but that is just urban legend.
GA is just a tool like sitemeter to report back on who goes where. I suppose that using that information to change your site might lead to better rankings, but then - vbulletin is set in stone so what is there for the forum owner to change anyway?

[Zachery]

Technically it couldn't possibly be myth. Without analytics Google can only track those using its products when they connect with you. Without analytics google has to depend totally on crowdsourcing data to find out how relevant you are. They don't give much weight to keywords, linkbacks, or the amount of content these days. For instance with panda google started tracking social media shares but facebook is a closed network so how could they possibly do this from within facebook? They use the referring url that analytics tracks. Of they have other products like search, chrome, gmail, and android. But still once they have a look under your hood they know exactly how relevant you are, where people are coming from, how long people stay on your site, and which pages are the most popular. They even know which regions you are the most important in.

They'd be insane not to utilize that data. This is all conjecture but there is no way I wouldn't.

Uh no. They have google search bots, by the trillions, to spider the web. They don't need GA to figure out anything about your site and how popular it is.

[donald1234]

I agree, it is just another way for Google to control the internet, like Gmail GA is free not because they are a kind and generous company, it is because they have admin access to your data which they can use to further their own commercial gains.

[Zachery]

Facebook has no mobile browser, not sure what you're talking about. The facebook apps can use the native built in browsers.

Google can get data about you from various different ways: links you clicked on from google search results, various services they serve your webpage with, etc.

[Maltair]

My forum hasn't regained the ALEXA ranking it had when it was vb 3.8 but about eight months after implementing vb 5, I still believe there are more people logged on average on vb 5. I can't explain the discrepancy.

Possibly the lowered rankings are due to now dead links coming from:

1) backlinks that are out there in the internet - that refer to old vb 3.8/vbSEO forum URLs
2) links within my own forum posts that refer to old vb 3.8/vbSEO forum URLs

It would be difficult to address (1) - I'd need to be able to locate each of these dead backlinks and either edit the posts (assuming I made the posts myself), or add an additional post on the same page with the new URL.

I just haven't had time to address (2) which would entail hours of looking through thousands of posts to locate the dead URLs and substitute them with the new forum URLs pointing at the same posts/threads. I have done this editing within some dozens of posts though.

I have created a custom "dead URL / 402" page at my forum that advises people that the forum has been upgraded and that the content they seek is still there, but that they will need to search for it to locate the new URL. This works to alert humans but obviously not 'bots.

[Maltair]

This is the work I did to make sure no dead URLs in my vb5 forum, after upgrading from a vbseo formatted vb3 forum:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/forum/vbulletin-5-connect/vbulletin-5-connect-feedback/4317893-upgrading-from-a-vb3-forum-to-a-vb5-my-experience-over-all-positive?p=4342454#post4342454