Google Doesn't Find My Forum's Content

[Gary Lewis]

Peter - I don't understand the implications of what you said.  But let me ask another way: Is work ongoing to resolve the problem and be able to index the other 181 pages, or is that not possible due to the way Nabble works?

[Gary Lewis]

Gary Lewis wrote

Peter - I don't understand the implications of what you said.  But let me ask another way: Is work ongoing to resolve the problem and be able to index the other 181 pages, or is that not possible due to the way Nabble works?

Peter - I still don't understand what you meant by your post.  Can you help me?

And, here's the latest status, with 175 pages either re-directed or excluded by 'noindex' tag.

[haozwang<Nabble>]

they are being redirected as expected but they are being redirected to a different page on your site, so it shouldn't effect the indexing

[Gary Lewis]

Peter - I'm lost.  I don't understand what you are saying about it not effecting the indexing.  Something is because over half of the forum isn't being indexed.  So, let me just ask simply - is there a plan to fix the problem near term?  

[haozwang<Nabble>]

Hi Gary don't panic yet. There might be a different issue than the redirect. I only raised the redirect issue to franklin. He is busy with another project so he has limited time with nabble. Let me give him the issue about 1/3 of the page not being indexed and see what he says...

[Gary Lewis]

Please do raise it with Franklin.  

But, it is more than half that isn't getting indexed, not 1/3.

[haozwang<Nabble>]

haha I forgot I already raised the issue...
He was saying that if 1/3 of the pages are indexed it will include thread pages so it is working properly. Let me inquire him about certain pages with noindex tags

[Gary Lewis]

It may be working "properly", but I can't find a lot of things via a Google search that I can find via Bing or Yahoo.  So the effect is not correct.

[Gary Lewis]

Peter - I've done a lot of searching and I'm not able to find much in my forum via Google, in spite of them saying that they've indexed a bit less than half of the pages.

So I'm about ready to remove the redirect and see how my users get along with that.  But don't want to cause any problems with work that you or Franklin might be doing.  Please advise if I should hold off.

[haozwang<Nabble>]

hold off a bit this stuff might take time...

[Gary Lewis]

Ok, if something is happening to resolve the problem I'm happy to hang on for a few more days.  I like the rest of my Nabble forum, but it is defeating the purpose of helping others if they can't find us.  And I'm sure that is the case with many other embedded Nabble forums.  So if I can help by hanging on a few more days I'm happy to do that.

[haozwang<Nabble>]

Franklin is saying that the analytics is showing some misleading things due to how nabble works:
check this:

now lets follow the redirection(click on it, notice the redirection is still in your domain):

now if we fetch again

as you can see its redirected still to your own domain and it is still being indexed. its just the way nabble works that the search console shows the redirected urls.
notice the third image url and the first image url only differ by 1 letter.
/CHANGE-TO-FORUM-tp5625p5672.html
/CHANGE-TO-FORUM-td5625.html#a5672

the tp url are meant to be redirected
do you follow?

[Gary Lewis]

Peter - I see what you are saying.  And obviously you know far more about how Nabble works than I do.

However, that doesn't explain why I can't find many things on my forum when using a Google search.  Here are just a few examples, but I could go on and on and on.  And note that many of these are early posts in the forum, so Google has had plenty of time to find them - but has not.  And note that the Nabble search function and a search engine that I installed within the forum both find all of these things.

So, forgetting the metrics from Google, there are many things on my forum that Google is not finding.  That's why I'm ready to turn re-directing off.  But, if Franklin is actively working on this then I will hold off until March 1st - or another date of his choosing.  I certainly don't want to scupper any work he is doing, and this has to be a problem for all embedded & redirected forums, not just mine.

"My 4-door diesel project has a hopeless case of what Gary would call scope creep."  Permalink  Can be found with both Yahoo and Edge, but Google doesn't find it on my forum - just on this thread.

"Gary, if that makes you jealous, my sister's '83 I picked up for her for free has factory perfect floor pans and also all perfect factory rosewood trim and dash-pad. "  Permalink  Can't be found with Google but can with Edge.

"Mine has grown from a little update (wanted to get rid of the carburetor and go to an overdrive automatic) to a complete redo of a lot."  Permalink

[GregChapman]

To follow on from Gary's report, there has been a change since I last reported the results of this search on Google:

site:http://seahawk-forum.968426.n3.nabble.com/ seahawk hull

I now get three pages plus the same four images as earlier. Not what I'd call success!

Trying the same search on Yahoo and Bing (Are they the same these days?) I get 23 results

On ask.com I get 2 results (shown as four as the second two are duplicates!)

While using Nabble's internal search on the forum I get 57 results.

I was hoping that Franklin's tweaks would at least the same as Bing.

[Gary Lewis]

I'm happy to report that of the three test searches shown above, Google now finds the first and third on my forum.  Which fits with what Franklin told me via email, that Google appears to be indexing about 100 pages per week.  That's shown on the screen grab below.

Hopefully this will continue and all of the pages will be indexed such that everything can be found.  I'll report back as things progress.

Thanks, guys!  I really appreciate the help.  

[GregChapman]

On my search:

site:http://seahawk-forum.968426.n3.nabble.com/ seahawk hull

I am now getting seven results plus the same four images.

The curious thing, and I think this is a change, is that when I use the links to find more images, it says that there are none at all - it doesn't even re-show the four it finds on the original screen.

[Gary Lewis]

Greg - That's strange.  When I find things on my forum I get four images and when I click on the "more images" link I get those plus three more.

As for my forum's indexing, there was no progress in the recent week posted.  As previously said, the old Google Analytics reported that for Feb 25th 206 pages had been indexed.  And it has now reported that as of March 4th there were still only 206 indexed.

Curiously though, the new Beta GA shows that as of Feb 24th 207 pages were indexed and as of Feb 28th 208 were indexed.  And its latest reporting date is March 2nd, still at 208.

As for searching, I still can't find a hit on my third test phrase of "Gary, if that makes you jealous, my sister's '83 I picked up for her for free has factory perfect floor pans and also all perfect factory rosewood trim and dash-pad."

[Gary Lewis]

Time for an update.  As shown below, Google's classic search console thinks it has indexed 391 pages, while Google's Beta search console say it has indexed 371 pages - both as of March 18th.    And this kind of disparity has been constant throughout my monitoring of the indexing.

Anyway, that's 391 or 371 pages of what I think are 712 pages total.  So, a bit over half way.  But, now I've been able to find all three of my test phrases, so I know it is working.  (My father used to say "Patience is my one long suit."  But I think he was mocking me.  )