Previous / Next Showthread Links?

Is there any reason why 'Previous / Next' thread links don't show to spiders/bots?

vBSEO doesn't have any function to hide those links from Bots

I've just checked this thread just incase it was just me (as well as lots of threads on my forum) as googlebot (View HTTP Request and Response Header) and those links do not show :s (goes to check vB.com)

They are correctly displayed via Lynx

Have a look on vbseo threads via google cache.

(EG: http://webcache.googleusercontent.co...w.google.co.uk)

Interesting, it's vB that stops it...

...which makes "Replace 'Previous/Next Thread' redirect links?" completely useless for SEO (and as an option for vBSEO); which is great news! The 2 queries used to process the next/previous links is a real forum killer - serious showstopper for high traffic sites. I switched it off because it killed my database server (enabled it back when I was a small board thinking it would help), but then got worried that it would affect the link juice/link structure of the forum so looked into enabling it just for spiders... but seems it has never worked for spiders anyway, so doesn't matter.

My server has gone from a permanent 4+ server load (and locks/crashes/50+ serverload, when busy) down to 0.30 even when busy.

showthread.php

// next/prev links don't work for search engines or non-lastpost sort orders
$show['next_prev_links'] = (!$show['search_engine']
AND ($foruminfo['defaultsortfield'] == 'lastpost' OR !$foruminfo['defaultsortfield'])
);

Awesome! vb has built in cloaking!

Originally Posted by woostar

// next/prev links don't work for search engines or non-lastpost sort orders
$show['next_prev_links'] = (!$show['search_engine']
AND ($foruminfo['defaultsortfield'] == 'lastpost' OR !$foruminfo['defaultsortfield'])
);

Could someone elaborate on this? How/where do I incorporate this into my showthread templates? Also, is it worth using the replace previous/next option in vbseo, or is it useless for seo purposes like wooster suggested?

vbulletin uses a 'bot' id, and if it matches, it doesn't display next/prev links at all.

It honestly has little seo value as there's no inherit order to prev/next and will change every time a post is made in a different thread.

A quick follow-up post to this thread... I've just upgraded my test board to the latest release (4.1.8) and vBulletin seem to have suddenly opened these links to search engines (not to mention thay are replicating vBSEO's method to replace link titles).

Question to those that have upgraded to 4.1.8 - Has the sudden change of link structure had any effect on traffic or ranking?

We are running 4.1.8 here now, and our replacement still works correctly, as you can see below.

I know they work I run 4.1.8 too, that's not what I was referring to. I was referring to the change of internal PR between pages/site-structure now vBulletin has stopped clocking those links (and how that affects seo)

Is the link cloaking only on 4 series vb or 3.8 as well

I believe it is in all versions below 4.1.8