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All I know is, once you start messing with mod_rewrite to change an actual url into something else, nothing good can come from it. Soon as you find out it isn't helping anything and decide to revert (or move to another server and everything breaks), you lost all your SE rankings. Better have a good 404 page handy from the outset. These days SEO is an illusion. Not a single person out there can prove it works.
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"I can't seem to bring myself to say, 'Well, I guess I'll be toddling along.'
It isn't that I can't toddle. It's that I can't guess I'll toddle."
--Robert Benchley (1889-1945) -
Well you obviously don't know a whole lot then.All I know is, once you start messing with mod_rewrite to change an actual url into something else, nothing good can come from it.Comment
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We chose not to use vBSEO for two reasons:
(1) It mostly seems to be a sophisticated rewrite system. While this may be nice, there has been no conclusive proof that this actually has a lasting effect on search engine placement.
(2) The company refuses to offer a branding-free version of its product. This has been promised as early as 2005, and my boss requires that sites we put up do not advertise at all, not even made by / designed by etc. which is why we exclusively rely on products with branding-free licenses.Comment
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Also keep in mind that Google is always changing the way it indexes sites. So vBSEO is always having to change to keep up with things. And you don't get free lifetime updates with it. You have to keep paying more money each year to get access to updated versions. Otherwise your SEO version will become obsolete as Google and other seach engines change the way they index and rank sites.
Maybe it's worth it, I don't know. But just keep in mind it's not a one off payment.Last edited by MRGTB; Thu 7 Jun '07, 6:56pm.Comment
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SEO will never be a mature industry, because the moment it becomes an industry the search engines will kick it in the head. Search engines engineers know very well: it's either them or the SEO people.
The day SEO will became a true industry is going to be a sad day: searching on the Internet will be meaningless. Any site with any content will be able to rank high, just because it used SEO techniques. If that happens is going to be a disaster: people will look for additional ways to get information. Maybe some of them will even abandon Internet in favor of traditional sources of information, like books.
Suppose that one day you go on Google and search for "php tutorial". The first 100 sites that you get are scam sites full of ads with no content. This is the day when SEO will be an industry. It looks like the end of Internet as we know it: people start to avoid searching and the importance of bookmarks will be much higher, because when they will find (by mistake) a quality site, they will definitively keep a bookmark to it. Quality sites would be like gold in a sea of scam sites.
Everything else on the web is already a mature industry: advertising, webmaster business, programming a.s.o, but not SEO. Doesn’t that make you think about it ?
To me, SEO is the poor's man solution to the lack of content, especially when you are using a package like VBulletin that is already well-thought and organized.
Perhaphs I should mention: my observations are for on-page SEO. Off-page SEO can give results if you know how to do it (this is another story and I have no time for it right now) but you don't need VBSEO for it.Comment
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Translations provided by Google.
Wayne Luke
The Rabid Badger - a vBulletin Cloud demonstration site.
vBulletin 5 APIComment
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This SEO thing is too much of a headache is you ask me. Once people get really into it. There constantly having to change the way there boards SEO works to keep up with search engines.
Better to just add loads of content and keyboards and keep your fingers crossed, avoid the headache!
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What are you talking about ? Most of the time I can find what I want in minutes.
My life would be more difficult without a powerful search engine like Google. I agree that there are spammy results but those are the exception not the rule.
Nowadays, the Internet user has other options in his quest for information. Here I am refering to sites like digg.com. Combine the power of Google with the power of real-time human-made selection from Digg and the results are astonishing.
Your observation may be right for special searches, like "poker", but that's it. Most of the time (I would say 90%) Google works.
Thank you, Dream.Comment
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Maybe for you but for me it hardly ever works. Have never been to the Digg site so I don't know what it is like for information. Probably wouldn't suit my needs though. I don't search for things like web design. Not really my thing. I have hundreds of favorites already bookmarked for that. My searches usually involved looking for what a particular type of tree looks like or how to apply a particular painting finish to an item, etc... Most of the time, these are just easier in books with their alphabetical indexes and quick easy look ups. I don't really search the web for much of anything these days because there is too much garbage clogging the superhighway.
My web experience grows through an ever growing network of bookmarks that I get from sites that I visit regularly.Translations provided by Google.
Wayne Luke
The Rabid Badger - a vBulletin Cloud demonstration site.
vBulletin 5 APIComment
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I think I understand what you mean. You are searching for fairly complex things. For example, when looking for "how a particular type of tree looks like" or how to "apply a particular painting finish to an item", the search engine *must* understand your question and it must understand the documents it is searching on. You cannot solve this just by statistical analysis (e.g. how many times the word "tree" appears, what sites are linking there a.s.o.).
The technology for performing these kinds of searches is not available yet. First of all, the search engine must know you better in order to understand how you are usually thinking. This involves having an account with the search engine. Google has already taken the right steps into this direction.
The hardest part is to build a search engine that can read the information the way people do. This is not going to happen in the near future, mostly because of technical limitations. It is possible to make some intelligent fuzzy-logic algorithms to analyze pages in a more intelligent way, but that would require massive CPU power. Massive CPU power combined with huge amounts of data (the whole web) and everything seen as a "whole" (if you analyze page "A" but cannot establish its value in relation with other pages, the effort is pointless) is something that Google cannot handle.
I don't want to disappoint you, but IMO the kind of intelligent searches that you are interested in go even beyond the semantic web objectives:
It may be done sometimes in the future, but definitively you'll have to wait. It is possible that our generation won't see this kind of technology implemented into practice.
About the spam that you were complaining: you are perfectly right. When doing those kinds of searches you will get massive amounts of spam, or what looks like spam. I am saying that "looks like spam" because Google truly doesn't understand what you want.
I also hit these limitations many times. In time, I learn to use the "divide et impera" principle: divide your query in several easy sub-queries that Google can solve with statistical analysis. This is a partial solution and it takes a lot of time to do it. The far-better solution is to get involved in a community sharing the same interests. The quality of information that you will find there is going to be on another level.
This is why, us, the webmasters we'll still be in business in the future, and this is why Jelsoft doesn't have to worry about the future also.
Regards,
Razvan M.Comment
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