Why the vBulletin archive is useless and counterproductive

So, it's better to have the archive disabled? I'm seriously considering this...

I donno.. when search around the net for gaming bits n bobs.. i always get pointed to the archive or site map of the site.. wouldnt it also lose alot of hits?

right... and what would you rather have your vistors land on? that or your REAL web page?

that archive page you hit pushed their own REAL serp down. toss it.

Does this include complete removal of the sitemap then, too? I'm implementing my new style today, so I'll remove it and see how it goes.

the sitemap XML is good.
the 'sitemap' as archive is useless IMO.

Ok, so I just turn the 'archive' off in AdminCP, then delete the /archive directory and leave the sitemap as it is?

*Bump*

Ok i've finished testing the site with archive on again for about three months, the results are shocking... I lost 200.000 indexed pages for the forums alone. Google does not like the archive at all. Not only does it NOT have any pagerank (which is very bad) it also has a very negative impact on the number of indexed pages. I'm not sure but I think it might have an impact on ranking as well.

I'm now fully convinced this needs to be disabled, it has absolutely no purpose and since Google seems to agree with me on this I'm removing the archive completely.

Originally Posted by Jason Amison

Ok, so I just turn the 'archive' off in AdminCP, then delete the /archive directory and leave the sitemap as it is?

Correct.

about time

I'll post an update of the indexed pages again in three months from now.

ATM 132.000 indexed pages for forum.domain.com.

Ok, removed -- lets see how this goes.

How can i fix the following error though?

http://www.techsupportteam.org/forum/sitemap/

if you've physically removed the directories, that error will probably show.

did you also turn it off in vB's options panel?
and remove the vbseo rewrite? (change to 'leave it as vb default')

Yes, done that! Error still showing, though -- shouldn't I remove the sitemap too?

Originally Posted by Jason Amison

Yes, done that! Error still showing, though -- shouldn't I remove the sitemap too?

You mean vbseo_sitemap? In that case, no that's the sitemaps that are send to google, that's good.

To overcome the error re-upload the /archive again. If you try to go to the old archive url it will redirect to the forum (atleast on my forums it does).

If you really want to prevent crawlers to enter /archive you can add it in a robot.txt file.

Hi folks,

Would it be possible for someone who has done as suggested (turn off the archive, etc...) to post an ordered list of exactly how to do this?

You know, like this:

Code:

Step 1. - change the setting (Setting) in this location (location) to (this).

With an explanation:  Setting this option this way does this: (what it does)

Step 2. - do this next
and why...etc.

I know it might be a bit of a pain to take the time to do it, but I know it would help people like me to understand what we are doing and how it changes things instead of blindly 'trying' to find the information in the 5+ pages of this thread. I don't want to miss something important and screw up. (Every time I go into the VBSEO control panel I get a bit nervous... lol!)

I am a bit concerned about making this change, but it *sounds* like it will make things better. I have steady traffic and most of it comes from google, but I would like to increase that traffic (duh.. )

Before starting to use VBSEO I had a page rank of 4. With it, my rank has dropped to 3. That said, I have more traffic on my site. I never really tracked 'numbers' before VBSEO, so I am not sure what the overall effect has been, but have had this for two years or so now with the footer number links enabled. (100K posts, 10K threads, 2.7K members and 63 footer number links ((yes, a small community compared to most of you folks)) ).

Thanks for the help and patience.

Cheers,
BD