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

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  • OhioDave
    Banned
    • Jul 2012
    • 244

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

    Just thought someone might like to know that your results in Google are plummeting since upgrading to vBulletin 5. I'll update this thread weekly or bi-weekly to show the drop in the mount of pages indexed in Google according to using the querey "site:http://www.vbulletin.com

    I started checking this last month on suspicion that vB5 is bad, very bad for SEO.

    5-24-13 to 5-31-13 Search results returned about 2,560,000 results
    6-1-13 to 6-8-13 Search results returned about 2,225,000 results
    6-9-13 to 6-16-13 Search results returned about 1,975,000 results
    6-17-13 to 6-23-13 Search results returned about 1,761,000 results
    6-24-13 to 6-29-13 (present day) Search results returned about 1,650,000 results

    Yes we can debate this metric as a measure of SEO all you want, but the fact remains that if pages aren't indexed, then they can't be returned as results for search queries.

    Anyone else with similar experience.
  • DemOnstar
    Senior Member
    • Nov 2012
    • 1912

    #2
    That's just short of 50 %..
    Not looking good is it..


    Comment

    • OhioDave
      Banned
      • Jul 2012
      • 244

      #3
      Has it ever really looked good for vBulletin 5 connect? This is just another blemish on the record.

      Updating any site to vB5C at this point would literally be suicide if you depend on search engine traffic. I probably should have started to take screenshots when I started this study, but I didn't. Starting today though on 6-30-2013 I'm going to be taking a weekly screenshot. (And look only a 30k drop in pages overnight)

      Click image for larger version

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      Comment

      • BirdOPrey5
        Senior Member
        • Jul 2008
        • 9613
        • 5.6.3

        #4
        A point of order- we also switched from https to http during the VB5 upgrade, for a more accurate number your google query should be: site:www.vbulletin.com

        Which would include both results.

        Comment


        • OhioDave
          OhioDave commented
          Editing a comment
          Feel free to do it either way. It returns the same numbers....
      • Deimos
        Senior Member
        • Oct 2002
        • 1517
        • 3.8.x

        #5
        Only real thing you can do to recover, is just dump VB5 and go with something that actually works.

        Comment

        • Zachery
          Former vBulletin Support
          • Jul 2002
          • 59097

          #6
          If I had to guess, we lost a lot of the links/pages of on the archive

          Comment

          • OhioDave
            Banned
            • Jul 2012
            • 244

            #7
            Okay, that will account for some loss. Buy why does it continue to decline despite the fact none of the old archive pages are included now despite the forum continuing to grow and get new topics??

            Comment

            • is_it_me
              Senior Member
              • Apr 2008
              • 546

              #8
              Originally posted by Joe D.
              A point of order- we also switched from https to http during the VB5 upgrade, for a more accurate number your google query should be: site:www.vbulletin.com

              Which would include both results.
              I hope not, as such a search is only showing about 398,000 results!

              Doing the search on 'site:http://www.vbulletin.com' is now showing about 1,610,000 results, down another 10,000 since OhioDave's post 3 above.


              testing 1..2..3

              Comment

              • BirdOPrey5
                Senior Member
                • Jul 2008
                • 9613
                • 5.6.3

                #9
                Originally posted by OhioDave
                Feel free to do it either way. It returns the same numbers....
                I did and it returned a larger number. Not double big, but larger, about a hundred thousand more.

                Originally posted by is_it_me
                I hope not, as such a search is only showing about 398,000 results!
                Then Google is telling different people different numbers, yesterday it was over 1.6 million and today it is 1.6 million for me.

                Comment

                • is_it_me
                  Senior Member
                  • Apr 2008
                  • 546

                  #10
                  Originally posted by Joe D.
                  Then Google is telling different people different numbers, yesterday it was over 1.6 million and today it is 1.6 million for me.
                  I think I have the answer for that - I searched on google.co.uk, which is now down to about 397,000 results for a 'site:www.vbulletin.com' query, google.com is indeed returning about 1.6 million, odd there's such a different, because for a 'site:http://www.vbulletin.com' query both google.co.uk & google.com are returning 1.6m for me.


                  But that 1.6m is still down about 1m on what was quoted in the OP from 31st May.


                  testing 1..2..3

                  Comment

                  • OhioDave
                    Banned
                    • Jul 2012
                    • 244

                    #11
                    I wish I would have started tracking it sooner. I bet its down multiple millions from what it had in the 4.x days

                    Comment


                    • OhioDave
                      OhioDave commented
                      Editing a comment
                      Even to this day its loosing about 10k indexed pages a day.....
                  • Wayne Luke
                    vBulletin Technical Support Lead
                    • Aug 2000
                    • 73981

                    #12
                    From what I understand and have been told, results are actually expected to drop as Google indexes the canonical URLs as well as the NEXT and PREV relative links in the system. This means that individual pages of a topic are less likely to be indexed. Indexing multiple pages of a topic, actually bleeds search relevance from the topic as a whole. So while there may be fewer page, the overall relevance of each page will be higher.

                    vBulletin 3 and 4 were high in "duplicate content" links due to the indexing of multiple pages.
                    Translations provided by Google.

                    Wayne Luke
                    The Rabid Badger - a vBulletin Cloud demonstration site.
                    vBulletin 5 API

                    Comment

                    • OhioDave
                      Banned
                      • Jul 2012
                      • 244

                      #13
                      Wow, so someone thinks that all the topics relevance is on the first page of a thread and any thing past that isn't going to have anything relevant for search engines..

                      Comment

                      • stevectaylor
                        Senior Member
                        • Aug 2007
                        • 380
                        • 3.6.x

                        #14
                        Holiday Forum
                        Motor Car Forum
                        Political Forum
                        Web Hosting Forum

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                        • dimas
                          Senior Member
                          • Aug 2007
                          • 100
                          • 3.6.x

                          #15
                          The reason could be not a soft problems, but some of the new Google algorithms. Even I'am running 4 with VbSEO, I discover a huge drop in the SERP and indexed pages in the past

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