When I take a sentence "snippet" from one of my forums using Elk, it doesn't show in Google. If I take a snippet from one of my "other" make forums, it shows up in Google. Wonder whats wrong?
Actual example below., Here is a snippet from one of my Elk forums NOT showing up in Google: (this post was from this February)
"I hope you like my latest abstract painting. It has a Southwestern look I've been told." (cut and paste into Google)
Interesting. I tried this on my forum. For certain categories I take part of the first message in a topic and put it on the site's front page in a blog format. Text in those parts of the message return my blog page as the first result in a google search. No link to the forum topic or message itself. Also if I search on text later in the message (parts that did not get posted on the front page) google does not provide a link to my site (at least not near the top).
It does seem for whatever reason google isn't too fond of indexing the posted content of elkarte pages. This could also explain why google is so fond of associating my site with the repetitive info of the forum rather than the actual content. Keywords for my forum include "logged", "views" and "quote". I've also mentioned in the past that the pages it picked if you searched my domain were things like the credits and the login and register pages so I set them all to return no index.
I wonder if this is due to the naming conventions in the layout of elkarte. I just checked a phpBB forum and picked a random post down a page and searched for a quoted line. Google returned a link to that post on that forum.
On phpBB the messages are contained in divs whose class is "content". In ElkArte the messages are contained in divs whose class is called "inner". Perhaps inner should be called "content".
I guess there is another " Google not indexing " thread on this forum. But that was about links.
Just as an interesting observation the parts of my front page being indexed are in a div that does contain "content" in its class although not the actual stand-alone word "content".
Also noticed this. In the Display template there is a class called content that is used to contain polls at the top. I have a few pages with polls. Sure enough the poll question and poll choices are indexed with google and return a link to the exact page. Somewhat unexpectedly searches for exact text in messages in replies to the poll topic ON THE FIRST PAGE (which has the content div holding the poll) also return links to that page. Messages on following pages (at standard pagination size which google would see) return no links from google.
I wonder if this is why I see SOOOOOOOOO many robots on a particular topic with a poll in it far more often than any other topic.
So I did a little experiment. I modified the display template to replace class "inner" with the class "messageContent". I also went into the css files and copied the inner class itself over to messageContent (and just renamed the .inner > .bbc_table_container stuff as I don't think they're used outside of the display page). I chose messageContent because it isn't used anywhere in ElkArte (so I didn't have to worry about fixing "content" everywhere it was used) and also because that was a close wrapper on Xenforo for their messages.
Next I chose an older topic on my forum and searched for phrases from it on google. No results returned. I then submitted that topic to google to reindex which happily it started on right away. A few seconds later I searched for the same quoted text and it was returned as the first link on google. A waited a few more minutes and grabbed some text randomly from page 6 of the topic. Also first result on google linking to the correct page.
I've submitted a almost 2 year old topic but google hasn't started indexing it yet. Right now quotes don't find the page. Hopefully after it's reindexed it will. If so this is a very simple change that seems like it could have big impacts on google friendliness.
Well happy result. Google reindexed the first page of the two year old topic and searching for the first sentence of the first page now even without quotes returns my site as the first hit where it didn't a few minutes ago. It has moved in front of a few wikis with many similar terms. Checking the google cache time it definitely just reread the page as the cache time is a few minutes ago.
Is it really the change of markup or the reindexing? I have no way to prove it but you'd think since it was a two year old post it would have been indexed several times. Checking later pages in the topic google's cached copy is a few months old.
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22So%20when%20you%20enable%20this:%20Minify%20Javascript%20and%20CSS%20files%22
Sorry, I was in a hurry (lunch was waiting :P).
Okay, let's expand a bit.
Interesting what scripple found.
The URL I posted above, obviously refers to Elk 1.1 that has mainly 1 little difference: the use of some more html5 tags in probably more appropriate positions.
To be on the same line, I tested also an 1.0 site:
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Adesso%20metto%20una%20seconda%20immagine,%20ma%20prima%20un%20po%27%20di%20testo%20per%20fare%20spazio%20e%20vedere%20quanto%20taglia.%22
and this, again, is interesting, even more because it's a direct (involuntary) comparison with an SMF 2.0 site.
So, what we see is:
1) the topic of the elk site is apparently not indexed,
2) instead the profile page is indexed,
3) the SMF site shows the topic.
Since scripple mentioned classes, let's see the chain we have in the three situations:
1) elk display page:
html
body#chrome.action_messageindex.board_1
div#wrapper.wrapper
div#main_content_section
div#forumposts.forumposts
form#quickModForm
div.post_wrapper.windowbg
div.postarea
div#msg4.inner
2) elk profile page:
html
body#chrome.action_profile
div#wrapper.wrapper
div#main_content_section
div#admin_content
div#profilecenter
div.windowbg.core_posts
div.inner
3) SMF 2.0 (PremiumMGC theme)
html
body
div#wrapper
div#content_section
div
div#main_content_section
table#sp_main
tbody
tr
td#sp_center
div#forumposts
form#quickModForm
div.windowbg
div.post_wrapper
div.postarea
div.post
div#msg_15026.inner
For the sake of comparison, elk 1.1 has:
html
body#chrom.action_messageindex.board_3
div#wrapper.wrapper
section#main_content_section
div#forumposts
main
form#quickModForm
article.post_wrapper.forumposts
div.postarea
div#msg_28413.inner
What scripple is suggesting could make sense, the only two potential post-related identifiers in 1.0 are:
div.post_wrapper.windowbg
div.postarea
though, both contain the word "post", but is not the full name of the class, it's part of a bigger name.
So it could mean that google doesn't "split" the class name, but just takes everything and compares it with some list of words that may mean "content".
To be clear my simple change was
html
body#chrome.action_messageindex.board_1
div#wrapper.wrapper
div#main_content_section
div#forumposts.forumposts
form#quickModForm
div.post_wrapper.windowbg
div.postarea
div#msg4.messageContent
I don't know if google treats post as meaning content or not, although it seemed to work for your SMF example. The phpBB and XenForo forums I looked at use #content and #messageContent. My blog page that gets indexed uses #ddtcontent. DDT is specific to my forum so it's not so helpful to google yet google seems happy to pick up on the content in those divs as well.
https://www.google.it/search?q=Secondo+Jeremy+Clarkson+la+Skoda+superb+viene+paragonata+a+un+pezzo+di+formaggio.....ed+e+al+terzo+posto.+Ma+che+sta+a+d%C3%AC.&oq=Secondo+Jeremy+Clarkson+la+Skoda+superb+viene+paragonata+a+un+pezzo+di+formaggio.....ed+e+al+terzo+posto.+Ma+che+sta+a+d%C3%AC.&aqs=chrome..69i57&client=ubuntu&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
That's strange, I see the page indexed just because it was published on my homepage with simple portal, but I don't see the topic
Sounds like my front page. What's the markup around it on simple portal?
Is there a fix for this?
Please don't forget about this, and probably should be moved from Chit Chat board
In my results the topic is the first one, followed by the SP news.
That's right, but it was not displayed first. I don't understand, I didn't do any modifications. I'll do other tests and let you know
If I were to guess, I'd say that the SP news is indexed first because it's the home page (at the first moment), while the topic is something "deeper", so it may take a little more to be found.
The topic appears first to me.
I did other tests with other topics and everything seems fine, the "problem" was that the topic was in home page as a news block and was indexed quickly.
I hope we're staying up on this. Google indexing our sites should be a high priority , right up there with security I would think. Without Googles help, our forums will suffer. Visitors, (becoming members hopefully) are the lifeblood of a forum.
Relating to my other post in another thread I just made, I was with "Chocolate" forum script, because at least every post was showing up in Google. That was my main reason for using that forum software.
I just took a random snippet from a post that Emanuelle made 4 months ago and it is NOT showing up in Google, below is the snippet:
"I wake up this morning and I couldn't find the topic so I was wondering"(https://s15.postimg.org/64zs2sm6f/test.png) (https://postimg.org/image/64zs2sm6f/)
That's a little disappointing....I really want conversations from my forums to show in Google.
the mentioned post of
@emanuele was indexed in 7 Jan 2017
and this post of yours was indexed in 7 Feb 2017
since the forum uses 1.1 RC 1 , was any fixes applied for this in the new version and my 1.0.9 is missing it ?