[How To] Completely Turn Off the vBulletin Archive

Is this robots.txt correct?

User-agent: *
Allow: /
Disallow: /archive/
Disallow: /sitemap/

Yes. that is fine.

Step 5: Remove the sitemap links in footer

• Go into your vBSEO Control Panel (vbseocp.php) from your web browser and find the setting group called vBSEO Footer Archive Links.
• In the dropdown, select the Do not add Links to Archive Pages option, then hit the save settings button

i couldn't find the "vbseo footer archive links"

it's under Other Enhancements:

thank you very much

I just checked your vbseo.com sitemap page, and you have links like (for General Discussions):
http://www.vbseo.com/sitemap/f-2.html, but on the forum you have http://www.vbseo.com/f2/

Should it work that way? in my forum I have something like /sitemap/f-2.html in sitemap and /general-duscussion/ as a regular forum link, is this ok? Shouldn't these sitemap links be the same as the forum ones ?

No, they are different. It is the archive re-written. The threads then re-direct to the true thread (in our configuration option in use)

Originally Posted by Michael Biddle

How To Completely Turn Off the vBulletin Archive

Step 1: Turning the archive off is relatively easy, first we start with vBulletin itself:

• Visit your vBulletin Admin Control Panel, and on the left hand side, go into vBulletin Options.
• In the dropdown, find Search Engine Friendly Archive.
• Set the first option (Forum Archive Enabled) to "No", and hit the "Save" button.

Step 2: Now we want to change a few vBSEO Settings, in order to stop the rewrite:

• Go into your vBSEO Control Panel (vbseocp.php) from your web browser and find the setting group called vB's Archive Options.
• For the first drop down option, select Keep vB's Archive default settings.
• Then hit the "Save Settings" button to proceed (Remember to have your config_vbseo.php CHMOD to at least 666)

Step 3: Disable search engines from indexing archive:

• Inside of your robots.txt, you should add the following lines to the bottom. (If you had a custom location for your archive, then please add that just like the following)
  
  
  • Disallow: /sitemap/
  • Disallow: /archive/
  
  

Step 4: Disable archive from sitemap (If you have our vBSEO Sitemap Generator installed, proceed, if not, then you are finished)

• Visit your vBulletin Admin Control Panel, and on the left hand side, go into vBulletin Options.
• In the dropdown, find vBSEO Google/Yahoo Sitemap Generator.
• Find option Include Archive Pages and set it to No.

Step 5: Remove the sitemap links in footer

• Go into your vBSEO Control Panel (vbseocp.php) from your web browser and find the setting group called vBSEO Footer Archive Links.
• In the dropdown, select the Do not add Links to Archive Pages option, then hit the save settings button

Quick question guys, with the latest vbseo 3.6 rC2 is it still necessary to make all these changes for best SEO?

I fully support disabling the archive. It is completely un-ncessary with vbseo installed.

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

I fully support disabling the archive. It is completely un-ncessary with vbseo installed.

Sounds good Brian thanks for the reply I'll work on making those changes on disabling my archives.

I see vbseo has sitemap in footer, why should we remove that ? i followed all steps, here are my websites Whatafy - We Have All The Answers For you, Mybetinfo.net - Mybetinfo.NET - Online betting, poker, casino, backgammon, bingo,rummy it is ok ?

vbseo.com has every option enabled as it serves as a 'live demo' of every feature. Some of these features were added in the first versions of vbseo, way back in 2005. Things change, and in time, the archive has become less effective, especially once the XML sitemap protocol came out. Before that, the archive was the best way to have deep-links to pages (ie, page 97 of a 100 page thread will never have a direct link to it until you're on page 96 of that thread). But, the sitemap XML has every page on it to tell google about it already, so it's purpose is not as important as it used to be.

I understand now, thank you for explanation and support.

I just disabled the Archive, let's see if it's a good works

After i disabled archive and sitemap in one month lost 15% visitors, so i go turn on at least archive.

Best Regards