Thread: Search engine game underway

Well now that I've noticed Google has a few links listed that point back to this site I opted to give Google the "official" go ahead on spidering the site. Rumor has it that Google will not spider anything anymore that doesn't have someone else pointing to it first. I also submitted to dmoz.org yesterday, not that I'm going to hold my breath on them as they appear to be overworked or understaffed, or both.

This forum has some modifications to it's base code that makes it a bit more friendly to search engines then the default stock phpBB code. This will help to attract more attention to the site while maintaining relevance. We don't want to be spammers now do we

I again want to thank 2112 and everyone who is posting to this forum for keeping it alive, it's very difficult to get a good forum off the ground. Picture the following, the site is listed on every search engine man has to offer however their is absolutely no posts on the site, even if a visitor found the site they would have no reason at all to join a dead forum. That's why everyone in the starting phase of this project is so important. I can only hope your having some fun.

Here's hoping for a quick visit from Google. May luck be on our side.

Just to update everyone on this, it's going to be a while, perhaps months before any of the search engines pick up this site, it's a bit depressing, however it's just the way it is. I for one won't give up on the site. The general consensus is that this site has great potential.

Code:

66.249.66.100 - - [01/Nov/2004:22:16:02 -0700] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.1" 200 14 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)"
66.249.66.100 - - [01/Nov/2004:22:16:02 -0700] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 6657 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)"

Anyone know what this is? It's the sites first hit from Googlebot.

This is a very good thing, very good. If the pattern holds true about a week or so from now it will come back and spider all the content in the site, 3 days after that we would be listed on google.

Crossing fingers that this is the case.

I'm psyched.

That would be so cool! But I have to say that I'm suprised we have such good conversations here already. It will be so wonderful when google starts pointing people to us.

Well Google has listed the Index (main) page of this forum, doesn't do us any good really until they list the rest. It is however a very good sign that they will in fact list the entire site in a few weeks. Everything search engine related runs pretty slow.

I shall be patient and see what happens.

Good news! When searching for 'HomoUniversalis' on Google, you are the third hit!

I'm confident, though, that this site will soon be linked to other keywords as well .

Mr U

Originally Posted by HomoUniversalis

Good news! When searching for 'HomoUniversalis' on Google, you are the third hit!

I'm confident, though, that this site will soon be linked to other keywords as well .

Mr U

It's slowly getting there, Google is taking a while to get to the inside pages.

I did notice when searching on the new MSN beta search site that we are #7, couple days ago we were #10. This is based on searching for "science forum".

So, it's just a waiting game.

Sign up for Google's adsense. It virtually guaruntees you get spidered regularly(give Google a financial incentive to spider you :wink: ) You can place the ads in pretty unobtrusive areas that have minimal impact on your forum's look.

Google spidered my forum some but when I implemented the ads it really spidered and continues to do so regularly (i.e. at least a full daily spider of all pages). These generate very little revenue for your site (pennies a day at best) but they are very effective at getting you indexed and allowing you to see what has been indexed - an indexed page will not have PSA's unless the thread is too small.

Also check this out: Search Engine Optimisation for phpBB. Some very good tips there.

Originally Posted by Gary

Sign up for Google's adsense. It virtually guaruntees you get spidered regularly(give Google a financial incentive to spider you :wink: ) You can place the ads in pretty unobtrusive areas that have minimal impact on your forum's look.

Google spidered my forum some but when I implemented the ads it really spidered and continues to do so regularly (i.e. at least a full daily spider of all pages). These generate very little revenue for your site (pennies a day at best) but they are very effective at getting you indexed and allowing you to see what has been indexed - an indexed page will not have PSA's unless the thread is too small.

Also check this out: Search Engine Optimisation for phpBB. Some very good tips there.

Adsense I've heard has mixed results, I guess it wouldn't hurt.

The website should be very SEO friendly at the time. I've made a ton of my own custom hacks to make it so.

Ok, well I signed up for Adsense and as you can see added Ad's to the bottom of the page. Google has already started to spider the site. I figure a couple days and it'll have most of it.

I don't like the ads much, but if they serve to better the site in any way, then they are worth the hassle.

I like the ads. They are unobtrusive, relevant to the site, and look good. Thanks for doing that.

Well Google has been spidering the site all day long, we just might see some real pages get listed in the next day or so. With any luck this will bring us some new users.

The Ad's appear to be ok, sometimes they are a bit off in subject.

Just to keep our members posted, we are starting to get some hits from google. The key is going to be topics, the more the better. I say just live life on the forum as you have been and everything will pick up pace all on it's own.

I knew this was going to be a slow start, it however is growing and that's a good thing.

Hi,

The URL you suggested

http://www.thescienceforum.com/

has been added to Yahoo!. It will appear after our next update, probably
within the next 2-4 days. You can find your site at that time by looking
through the "What's New" listings (http://www.yahoo.com/new/)
or by searching on its title or URL.

It has come to our attention that various organizations have been sending
unsolicited messages to new sites that appear in our listings. We're sorry
if you're inconvenienced by messages of this kind; Yahoo! does not condone
these messages in any way, nor do we divulge to anyone contact information
for the sites we list.

Thank you for taking the time to suggest your site. We rely on our users
to make Yahoo! complete and comprehensive. In order to keep Yahoo!
accurate, please also let us know of any future changes that might affect
your listing.

If you haven't already done so, and you'd like to return the favor
and put Yahoo! on your own site, please see
http://www.yahoo.com/docs/yahootogo/ for detailed instructions.

Thanks again,

The Yahoo! Team

---------------
For more information about Yahoo!'s site suggestion process, please
read the help documents located at http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/url/[/url]

Cool. 8)

Originally Posted by 2112

Cool. 8)

Yah, this will get it in the main directory, not just listed on Yahoo. So better then I could have hoped for. Thanks Yahoo

Now if only Dmoz would do the same.

I have found DMOZ to be glacial in it's response. A year or more to process your request to get listed is common.

Originally Posted by Gary

I have found DMOZ to be glacial in it's response. A year or more to process your request to get listed is common.

Yah, I've heard the same. The part I don't get is how they list some sites so much faster then others. 35mmonline.com , one of my original "pet" projects was listed in less then a month. It's got a 5 page rank now because of it.

Perhaps it has something to do with what's needed. Like, if they have almost no sites about 35 mm (I'm assuming that's pictures or film or cameras), then they take those up faster, but for the sites that they have plenty of it takes a year, maybe?

Well folks we now have a 4/10 page rank from Google. This is a very good thing. To have a 4 this early in the game is nice. Would I like higher, sure. I'm still very happy with the 4.

What does that mean? Are we 4th on the list or on the 4th page or what?

Originally Posted by 2112

What does that mean? Are we 4th on the list or on the 4th page or what?

Google uses a page rank system to deterrmine how important a website is vs some other website. So if you searched for a phrase and two websites had the same content, the page with the higher rank would show up closer to the top then the page with the lower rank. The highest rank we can have is a 10/10, I've not seen anyone but google itself with that rank. A 6/10 would be great.

So pagerank is kind of like our google scorecard. The higher the better.

The google toolbar will show you the rank of pages.

Okay, I just searched the terms "science forum" and "the science forum" to page 13 on each and I did not see our forum. Have you found it on Google yet?

Originally Posted by 2112

Okay, I just searched the terms "science forum" and "the science forum" to page 13 on each and I did not see our forum. Have you found it on Google yet?

Nope, for some reason that term is still not hitting for us on google. Lot of other weird stuff is however. I'm not too worried about it yet.

Looks like things are going good! I happy to see the progress.

I just looked up "buffstuff" on google and we were the 5th thing there! This site was even before IAP! I guess I'm famous! 8)

We finally show up on Google for "Science Forum".

On MSN we are #1.

Alright! Where on Google are we?

Originally Posted by 2112

Alright! Where on Google are we?

Like the 3rd or 4th page

We'll get there oneday soon!