Making forum text visible to Google

[Tony S]

Perhaps I will have more luck here...

Hi! I have added a forum to my web hosting business web site. My intention was to increase the number of pages on the site to improve my Google ranking. However, I have found that text generated on the forum is not picked up by Google. Is there anyway that the pages generated by a forum can be changed so that they appear as HTML (or something else) and the search engines can read them? Is there any software that will do the job? What’s the mechanism that stops Google from reading these pages?

[ElCaballo]

It could be that the forum software you're using requires a login or uses dynamically generated pages so that Google can't read it. Do you have a robots.txt file on your server? That could keep Google out if you've got that forum page listed there. Normally, text on a forum should be accessible to Google.

What software are you using and are you running Linux or Windows?

[NS-Icon]

Hi,

I know that webhostingtalk.com is cached by Google, so worst case scenario you could change your forum to vBulletin, which should work.

But as already mentioned by ElCaballo, most forums are cached by Google, so its probably something else. What forum software are you using so we can take a closer look?

[Tony S]

Invision Power Board

[NS-Icon]

Hi Tony S,

According to the Invision Power Board website, the product itself is search engine friendly and does have various search engine spider controls which can be accessed through the control panel, maybe you could take a look at this.

Also, if you are still unable to locate a fix for the issue, then I would strongly consider you ask at the Invision Power Board Community Forums as they may be better qualified at assisting you with the problem, you can access the forums at this address:

http://forums.invisionpower.com/

I hope you manage to find a fix for the issue, good luck.

Keep us posted on how things work out, and if possible what the problem was, it may help others users with similar issues in the future.

[Tony S]

Will do! Thanx

[dyna]

just curious what forum software you used? I'm using phpbb and got no problem

[NS-Icon]

Hi Dyna,

Tony S already outlined what forum software he is using :) Invision Power Board

[ASP-Hosting.ca]

Give it some time. Google doesn't spider everything you put online, right away.

[ayksolutions]

I think phpbb is the best honestly. Has tons of mods, very good, active support forum and hell, the best part it's FREE. And yes, it is google friendly.

[ASP-Hosting.ca]

I think phpbb is the best honestly. Has tons of mods, very good, active support forum and hell, the best part it's FREE. And yes, it is google friendly.

In my opinion vBulletin is much better and reliable product. Of course it cost money, but you get what you pay for.

[dougbollenger]

If you do not want Google to read your site and the forum page that is listed you can put robots.txt on the server that you use. The login page of the software that creates the forum page needs to be entered for Google to read it.

[dombowkett]

Forum text will increase your code to content ratio as well as quality score of it.