Huge Hit in Traffic

If you've disabled showpost on your site, please check your vBSEO sitemap options and make sure you are not including them in the generated sitemap.

Also - if you are including vBulletin's original URLs in the sitemap, please disable that as well.

Check to see if the traffic has dropped for your gallery pages versus non-gallery pages. If only the gallery traffic dropped, and not the rest, then it would pinpoint some issue with the gallery links being removed from the homepage.

I would change the display from 40 links on the homepage back to 30. That would add 10 more links that would be *sharing* the link value that passes through to your forum. It's possible this could contribute to a reduction in rankings.

Thanks for your help Joe.

I just verified and I am not including show post or old URL's in the sitemap.

Oh wow, I went from 40 to 50 on recent posts. I changed it back to 40, and I also decreased the number of tags from 100 to 50.

I'm not showing the photo gallery has really taken a hit. It did of couse, but it seems proportionate to what the forums have lost too. I was seeing about 60 Unique page views and now I'm seeing around 20 on the photogallery.

I have now fixed the problem with the random member photos as well. They are showing as they should be.

Now that's thursday is over, I can report that my visits are down to 1014 (from 3772 on monday).

Is no one else seeing this on their own site?

Consider scaling the recent thread links back to say 10, and the tags to 10-20, and you can reduce your link profile even further.

Note: Check to see if the terms in the tags are generating any traffic by themselves before removing.

Are you running our LiveStats plugin? If so, it would be very easy for you to check individual pages instantly to see if they are generating any hits. When you find those that are not, you'll know it's safe to start downgrading link content such as the ones on the homepage.

I think there are still many ways to optimize your forum. However, it would be ideal to find out what exactly lead to the first reduction. Did you have a chat app installed recently?

I have similar issue:

http://www.vbseo.com/f45/sitemap-problem-33348/

Originally Posted by Joe Ward

Consider scaling the recent thread links back to say 10, and the tags to 10-20, and you can reduce your link profile even further.

Note: Check to see if the terms in the tags are generating any traffic by themselves before removing.

Are you running our LiveStats plugin? If so, it would be very easy for you to check individual pages instantly to see if they are generating any hits. When you find those that are not, you'll know it's safe to start downgrading link content such as the ones on the homepage.

I think there are still many ways to optimize your forum. However, it would be ideal to find out what exactly lead to the first reduction. Did you have a chat app installed recently?

First off Joe, thank you so much for taking the time to help me with this. I honestly did not expect this much help, and believe me, I am grateful. So thank you. To say the least, I've been a tad stressed about this.

I can certainly change the number of threads and links, however, the problem I run into is that a lot of my user base (including me) use the recent threads to scan for new topics, etc. I can certainly let them know it will be lowered, but I'll take a hit in usability as it's considered and used as a tool -- half the reason the recent threads were displaying such a high number was due to user complaints, I guess I'll have to help train them to use the "New Posts" button instead. So, having voiced my concern, if you think it will help, and make a big impact, I will certainly do it.

I have no problem lowering the tags to 10-20 though. I am not completely sure how to tell if the tags are actually generating any hits though -- I'm guessing compare it to the entrance keywords for / ?

While posting this reply, I lowered the "recent threads" to 20, and changed the tag cloud to 20 as well.

I am currently not using the Live stats plugin, as it wasn't something I thought my members would care about. However in the interest of getting to the bottom of this I have installed it -- and now see that I can control who sees it (I thought everyone saw it period) and will start using it. I'm not completely sure how to use it though (as it relates to my problem anyway).

Also, I don't know if you would be interested in me adding you to my Analytics profile so you could look at the stats as well as maybe adding an account on my forum so you can look and see the live stats. I know this may be too much, and I completely understand if you don't. Just thought I'd offer since it might make this easier. Just let me know.

I did have a chat app installed about 4 years ago, but nothing since then.

Again, thank you for your invaluable help.

Re: Usability with recent threads

If it's for usability perhaps you could find a happy medium by refining it. For instance, you could get rid of the links to the sub-forums in which each new thread is created (or turn off the links on them).

You could also place a large visible button or thread that uses can click to essentially be encouraged to visit the new post link.

Re: Tags generating hits

In Analytics you could check your search keywords to see how often the tag keywords were getting hits themselves (or as a part of a large phrase).

You can also check your Landing Pages and search to see which among them are in the tag URL format to find out which of the actual tag pages are getting hits.

Re: LiveStats is NOT for Your Members to See - Just You

Several users have made similar comments. So I want to clarify for anyone else reading this thread. We are responsible for the confusion.

You can ONLY see LiveStats here on vBSEO.com because we are using it as a "Live Demo" for our customers.

LiveStats is NOT intended for admins to show their stats to their users (unless you wanted to do that for some reason).

As you noted, you can set it up to display for ONLY the user groups of your choicing. Almost all admins are expected to keep it for their eyes only.

Re: Test account

Please setup a test account on your forum for me. You can PM me the login info. I recommend setting up a new UserGroup called "Stats Access", giving permissions to that group to see the LiveStats, and then adding the new account you create for me to that group. That will let me take a look.

Ok, I've removed the link for the forums (the name is still there, it's just no longer a link).

I've looked at the tags and analytics and their are certainly some words that are in the cloud, that are also in search terms, but nothing that indicates that they offer a huge benefit. One word here and there is all.

Test account is setup and I'll PM you the details as soon as this post is posted.

I've been doing some digging and found that one of the site links (the ones google has for my site when you do a search) was invalid. I've setup a custom re-direct to point to the corrected location.

I also discovered that my external.php file was being blocked with my block all .php files rule in robots.txt. I want .php blocked, but I didn't want external.php blocked (at least I don't think I do), so I setup a custom redirect, and a custom re-write so it's now external/ I'm also using a mod from cinvin that creates an RSS feeds page. None of the URL's on that page were re-written either. So I also added rewrites and custom redirects for the URLs.

I have to wonder if maybe me blocking the .php and not fully realizing the ramifications of doing so (not rewriting external.php and some other stuff I missed) has finally come back to bit me. Not sure though, since the URLs would still be valid despite the rss feed being restricted. Thoughts?

Those are fixed and I'm going to keep going through the error report for URLs restricted by robots.txt in Google webmaster tools.

What got me to really take a good like is that the number of restrictions went from 7000 or so (see a few posts back) to over 12,000 today.

So it would appear that google is trying to index my site, but I've un-intentionally not allowed it -- mostly due to not re-writing some stuff.

I'm also seeing google trying to index all my member profiles, which I don't want and have not included it in the sitemap (never has been). But for some reason those URLs that it's trying to index are all the old URL format (forums/member.php?u=xxxx)??? I show that I still have "301 Redirect Original Content" set to yes. So I'm guessing it's trying to re-index those pages that it already had in the index from before I had vBSEO installed (2+ years ago). Not sure though, as I'm just guessing.

I'm also showing that photopost, though it adds value to my forums for the users, is a wreck when it comes to SEO.

Anyway I'm hoping that helps shed some light. I still don't believe that's all I've done to offend google, but I think it's a start and certainly will help me going forward.

You definitely don't have your original URLs still included in the sitemap right?

I do not, and have not for a long time.

I also noticed that this thread should probably be in the "Analysis: Traffic & SERPS" forum instead of here if you would like to move it.

Also, if I can ask, how can I tell if my results are now in the supplemental index? I hear that term all the time, but don't have any idea how to check it.

It also occurred to me that back in Feb when I made my last changes (when the photogallery pictures stopped working) I also added a horizontal line of Adsense text ads directly above my lower nav bar. I wouldn't think this would cause this though, but I'm trying to figure out if that may cause a problem that I'm not aware of?

Also, I think I need to fix my 404 pages so they don't show ads on them as I'm sure that doesn't help either -- I've always wanted to do that, but haven't taken the time to do it. I will now though.

Supplimental index doesn't really 'exist' anymore to the public. G discontinued it 6 months ago or so...

Sorry to hear you're having issues with my files. Again, they were designed to be used in pars, not bits and pieces of each.

check your pagination.

if you're using
/t123/
and
/t123/page2.html
you're blocking all those too.

Thanks for the info Brian.

I don't blame you for your help (the file or anything else). Stuff happens and I'm not the type of person that blames anyway. Your real world expertise is valuable and I'm just glad to have you so willingly share it.

In my implementation I didn't directly use your file. I used the ideas you suggested and applied them to my situation. So I implemented a lot of your suggestions, but not by using the file.

As far as pagination goes (and URLs in general) I followed your suggestion and don't have .html or .php for any file that I want indexed. So pagination is taken care of by simply adding -p2/ to the end of the URL. You can see a sample here --> List the first to the last bike you ever owned

Well, the first thing i would so would be to start here:
[Invalid] Markup Validation of http://www.allthingsmoto.com/forums/f-114/list-first-last-bike-you-ever-owned-43516/ - W3C Markup Validator