Google is panlizing my site because the archive ins't mobile friendly

[DannyITR]

The archive is great for search indexing but it seems that's coming to an end. I got an email form google explaining to me that my site will be penalized:

Google systems have tested 15,700 pages from your site and found that 90% of them have critical mobile usability errors. The errors on these 14,100 pages severely affect how mobile users are able to experience your website. These pages will not be seen as mobile-friendly by Google Search, and will therefore be displayed and ranked appropriately for smartphone users.

I visited the links they gave on my phone and indeed, the VB default mobile style doesn't seem to touch the Archive. How can this be fixed?

[Wayne Luke]

Turn it off. Redirect all archive URLs to your main site with a 301. The Archive really hasn't been valuable since 2010.

As it doesn't use a style and all its HTML is hardcoded, it would be a large undertaking to update it. It really hasn't been changed much since it was introduced in the vBulletin 3.X days.

[DannyITR]

ok thanks! I disabled it and visiting an archive url just brings me to the forum index. Do I need a 301?

[DannyITR]

Because all the archive pages just redirect to the main index, all the google indexed pages will be broken. Can I redirect them to the actual thread?

[Wayne Luke]

You should be able to do that with a 301 redirect in your htaccess. I don't know much about regular expressions to tell you exactly what to put there though.

This mod may help: http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showt...hreadid=317477

[DannCG]

Hi Danny

I saw the Archive still showing on your site. Why have you decided to not proceed with disabling it instead? Can you share?

[Wayne Luke]

Closing this as the issue is old and not relevant anymore. If you want a mobile friendly version of vBulletin use vBulletin 5.