Duplicate Content due to Thread Pages? Anyone have a Fix?

[NJStangers Jonathan]

I just noticed an issue that when a 2nd page is created on my forum of any topic, it creates a DUP-title page causing the first page to drop from SERPs as I just noticed today. Yesterday this Google Search had the 1st page sitting on the 1st page and now it is not.

Has anyone found a solution to that or is there something I missed in VBSEO?

[NJStangers Jonathan]

is this the solution in forum display?

<title>{vb:raw foruminfo.title_clean} <vb:if condition="$pagenumber > 1">- {vb:rawphrase page_x, {vb:raw pagenumber}}</vb:if></title>  

I flipped it and add it this way

	<title> <if condition="$pagenumber>1"><phrase 1="$pagenumber">$vbphrase[page_x]</phrase></if> - $thread[prefix_plain_html] $thread[title] -$foruminfo[title] </title>

[Brian Cummiskey]

vb4 removed pagination for some reason. Do a search on here, there's a code snippit to replace it.

[NJStangers Jonathan]

Sorry I'm running on VB3 I believe the above code I had but the page # was towards the end so Google was reading all my long title pages as being the same page. I made the Page 2+ be first as seen with the update code here (is that good?)

	<title> <if condition="$pagenumber>1"><phrase 1="$pagenumber">$vbphrase[page_x] - </phrase></if>  $thread[prefix_plain_html] $thread[title] - $foruminfo[title] </title>

[Brian Cummiskey]

I would leave the page at the end, and instead limit the length of titles (pretty sure thats a vboption) to around 150 chars

[NJStangers Jonathan]

ah okay interesting. I checked my site along major forums and they all were running it with (thread - page - forum info) like I was. So is it really a bad idea to put the page first? I don't think it will hurt it in terms of SEO but possibly distinguish to Google faster that its a second page?

In terms of limiting the title tags, is there anyway to just limit the 2nd page title tag? If not where do I limit the title tags in general?

[Brian Cummiskey]

vboptions -> message posting and editing options ->
Maximum Characters Per Thread/Post Title


i have mine set at 85.


I wouldn't recommend the page before the title

[NJStangers Jonathan]

Thanks so 150 Characters good?

Why not? Any reasoning? I'm all about testing to see what effect it has....just curious if you had a reasoning

[Brian Cummiskey]

It looks like google ...'s at 65 chars on their search results listing. It's doubtful that they store or care about much more than that. I ma even lower mine now after seeing this, to 58, so that there's room for 'page xx' at the end ( i have few threads that reach 100+ pages)

[NJStangers Jonathan]

oh I don't doubt your reasoning, you are very knowledgeable. I'm just one to question what it would do if i ran them with the Page # in front? I guess there's only one way to find out by trying it for a week or a month? What do you think?

I too will have to adjust my character count