vBSEO Google/Yahoo Sitemap Generator for vBulletin 3.6.x, 3.5.x & 3.0.x

vBSEO Google/Yahoo Sitemap Generator - vBulletin 3.5.x
Download vB 3.8.x Compatible Version Here
Download vB 3.7.x Compatible Version Here
Download vB 3.6.x Compatible Version Here
Download vB 3.0.x Compatible Version Here

Note: Version 2.5 replaces all previous versions of the vBSEO Google/Yahoo Sitemap Generator, and now includes support for all the new URL types in vBulletin 3.8.x.

Overview
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Providing Google, Yahoo, Ask sitemaps is an essential step towards improving your forums.

The "vBSEO Google Sitemaps" plugin provides a solution that allows your forum to be indexed by the Google (and also Yahoo and Ask) search engines faster, more completely, more effectively, and with less bandwidth consumption.

The ultimate goal is to help you achieve more web traffic for your forum.

Originally Posted by Google's Description of GSM

https://services.google.com/inquiry/publishertools?hl=en_US
Google Sitemaps is an easy way for you to help improve your site?s representation in the Google index. It's a collaborative crawling system that enables you to communicate directly with Google. You get a smarter crawl because you can provide Google with specific information about all your web pages, such as when a page was last modified or how frequently it changes.

Note: This plugin is fully compliant with vBSEO 3.x version. The current version is vBSEO 3.2. However, if you are running vBSEO, please upgrade to vBSEO 3.2 or greater before installing.

Compatibility
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Fully compatible with:

• vBulletin 3.0.x, 3.5.x, 3.6.x, 3.7.x and 3.8.x
• vBulletin Blogs 1.0.x and 2.0.x *Optional
• vBSEO 2.x, 3.x *Optional

What does it do?

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• Auto-generates a Google XML sitemap for all of your specified forum URL types (including vBulletin Blog URLs).
• Auto-generates a Yahoo text sitemap for all of your specified forum URL types.
• Auto-notifies Google when a new sitemap is generated.
• Automatically sends you a summary of the sitemap generation via email each time it is created.
• Includes only publicly accessible forums and threads.
• Allows Google/Yahoo to find all of your forum URLs without having to spider the forum to find the links.
• Allows Google/Yahoo to find your forum URLs without having to account for query string and/or session ID information.
• Allows Google to give precedence to crawling your higher priority forum pages.
• Allows Google to give precedence to crawling your forum pages that change more frequently.
• Allows you to conserve bandwidth by more efficiently facilitating the crawling processes for GoogleBot and Yahoo Slurp.
• Is 100% compatible with the static CRUs (Content Relevant URLs) used by vBSEO-enabled forums.

How does it work?
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Whenever it is scheduled or invoked via the URL, this plugin will generate both the Google XML formatted and the Yahoo text formatted sitemaps. If you selected "Yes" to the Google auto-notification setting, Google will be notified each time the sitemap is generated. The Yahoo sitemap must be manually submitted to http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request/.

• Google Sitemap files are gzipped
• Forum and thread pages are listed with pagination (i.e. all pages for each forums/thread are included in the sitemap)
• Maximum Priority is set for Sticky threads.
• Optimization for sitemap generation on large forums.

Automated Reporting Tool
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The vBSEO Sitemap includes a report tool, allowing you to track your progress. To access your reports enter the following URL:

http://www.example.com/forums/vbseo_sitemap/

NOTE: Replace "http://www.example.com/forums/" with the full URL to your vB forum root.


You will be required to login by providing your "Sitemap Interface Access Password" from your vBSEO Sitemap settings in:

• vBulletin Admin CP (for 3.5.x/3.6.x/3.7.x/3.8.x users) OR
• vbseo_sitemap.php configuration file (for 3.0.x users) located in the vbseo_sitemap directory in your forum root.

Once you successfully login, you will be provided with a list of 'Useful Links'. Here are the 4 main links:

Show Reports List
The 'Show Reports List' link will display a report of each time your vBSEO Sitemap generator executed, including the (1) date, (2) run time, (3) total URLs included, and (4) and change in # of URLs included from the last generation.

Each vBSEO Sitemap generation record will include a (1) "View details" and (2) "Remove record" link. The "View Details" link shows more detailed information about the sitemap generated. The "Remove record" will permanently delete the record from your reports.

Show Sitemap Downloads Log
The 'Show Sitemap Downloads Log' link will display a report of each time your vBSEO Sitemap was downloaded by either a search engine (GoogleBot or Yahoo) or by another user agent (i.e. Web browser, etc.).

The report includes the (1) date, (2) name of sitemap file downloaded, (3) Bot, (4) IP address of the downloader, and the (5) User-agent.

Each vBSEO Sitemap download record will include a "Remove record" link which will permanently delete the record from your reports.

Run Sitemap Generator
The 'Run Sitemap Generator' link will automatically regenerate your Google and Yahoo sitemaps.

Your Forums Homepage
The 'Your Forums Homepage' link is a quick link back to your forum homepage.

Additional Links
Additional links to various other related SEO resources are also included.


Click "Install"
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Please click "Install" to show your support for this script.


Installation & Configuration for vB 3.5.x, 3.6.x, 3.7.x and 3.8.x as a Plugin
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Follow the installation/upgrade instructions provided in the docs/readme.html file.


Google Webmaster Accounts
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It is NOT required for you to have a Google Webmaster account to run the vBulletin Google Sitemaps plugin. If you decide to setup an account for testing purposes you can do so here:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login?sourceid=gsm&subid=us-et-about2


Copyright & Licensing

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• vBSEO Google Sitemaps plugin is copyright protected by Crawlability Inc.
• You are free to download and install this plugin on any vBulletin forum for which you hold a valid vB license.
• Unauthorized distribution of any code and/or documentation, whole or in part, included here is strictly prohibited.
• In addition, the following copyright notice must be maintained.

vBSEO(TM) ? 2005-2009 Crawlability, Inc.


Revision History
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02/22/2009 - Version 2.5 Released

NEW FEATURE: Blog tags URLs are included.
NEW FEATURE: Social Group Discussion URLs are included.
NEW FEATURE: Smart Priority applied for the following URL types

1. Show Post
2. Member Profiles
3. Forum Display
4. Poll Results
5. Blog Entries
6. Member Profile Albums
7. Social Groups
8. Social Groups Discussions
9. Social Group Pictures
10. Tags
11. Blog Tags

UPDATE: Compatible with vBulletin 3.8.x. Includes the following updated settings:

1. Priority Range - Show Post
2. Priority Range - Member Profiles
3. Priority Range - Forum Display
4. Priority Range - Poll Results
5. Priority Range - Show Thread
6. Priority Range - Blog Entries
7. Priority Range - Member Profile Albums
8. Priority Range - Social Groups
9. Priority Range - Social Group Pictures
10. Priority Range - Tags

Fix: Social Group Discussion database error is fixed.

Upgrade Instructions
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(1) Follow the installation/upgrade instructions provided in the docs/readme.html file.

(2) For versions of vBulletin 3.6.x only: Open "Schedule Manager" in the vBulletin Admin Control Panel (admincp); Remove existing scheduled task for Sitemap Generator if you have one.
Note: The new task will be automatically setup when you import the XML product file.

Other vBSEO Plugins

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• vBSEO - vBulletin Search Engine Optimization
  
• vBSEO Conditional Signatures for vBulletin

vBSEO Affiliate Program
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We welcome you to join the vBSEO Affiliate Program.

The mod_rewrite parms for this don't work for my site for some reason, although I know mod_rewrite works because I rewrite the www subdomain.

So... you can try this if you can't access your sitemap files from your vbroot folder. This is what I do...

(Note, you'll need access to cron to do this).

1) Remove the 2 line change to the .htaccess file from the instructions
2) Set up a cron job to run daily 1 hour after vbseo site map runs. For instance, I run my vbseo sitemap at noon each day, and I run this cron an hour later (1300 hours)

NOTE: Change "{vbroot}" to where your vbulletin forum is located on your server.

0 13 * * * cp {vbroot}/vbseo_sitemap/data/sitemap*.gz {vbroot}/

This copies your sitemap files to your forums root once a day at 01:00pm.

[firstrebel]

At the time of installing this hack Google had 228,000 pages indexed for us. It is now falling and is at 198,000. Also Yahoo only has ~16,000 pages indexed.

Can someone offer an explanation please?

Bob

[jaks]

Originally Posted by dknelson

Okay...maybe I found the problem. As usual, it is probably the result of not completely reading the instructions. I had it set to run once per night but had the minutes still set to *. So...I suppose it was trying to run every minute of that hour. I'll find out tonight and maybe this will help somebody else who is having the same problem.

Don

Good question, I was getting the same thing here too. You would figure that default would be set to 0 by default when you create a task. Pretty silly if you ask me. I have other tasks that will be going crazy aswell if this is the case.

Thanks
Jaks

[funinthesun]

I've had this mod installed for ages and yet my indexed pages on google haven't gone up at all! In fact, I only have 2 page on google and they are the two url's pointing to my forum. Does this really work or what? Also, reading google's guidelines it says that this sort of automated thing will cause your website to NOT be indexed. Can someone please elaborate? Thanks

[funinthesun]

Also, whenever I recieve the email update of the sitemap it's always blank for showpost even though I've set it to index these from my admincp?

[ConqSoft]

Well, since it was only released in November of last year, you couldn't have had it installed "for ages".

It can take a while (months) for your newly indexed pages to start showing up in Google. Are you showing that Google is downloading your sitemaps? (this hack has a log that shows everytime they have been downloaded)

[firstrebel]

Is a daily submission really necessary? Would once or twice a week not be enough?

Bob

[iojam]

I've had this mod installed for ages and yet my indexed pages on google haven't gone up at all! In fact, I only have 2 page on google and they are the two url's pointing to my forum. Does this really work or what? Also, reading google's guidelines it says that this sort of automated thing will cause your website to NOT be indexed. Can someone please elaborate? Thanks

Hello,

you should check that googlebot downloads your sitemap (look at "Show Sitemap Downloads Log" page).

It is not guaranteed that Google will index all URLs included into sitemap. More details:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/si...cs/en/faq.html

Also, whenever I recieve the email update of the sitemap it's always blank for showpost even though I've set it to index these from my admincp?

Make sure that you have the latest version of vBSEO Sitemap Generator installed.

[iojam]

firstrebel

Is a daily submission really necessary? Would once or twice a week not be enough?

Practically, it is not mandatory to submit daily.
Moreover, if you will manually add sitemap URL to your google webmaster account, you will notice that google downloads it daily even if you turn off "notify google" in Sitemap Generator options.

[firstrebel]

Thank you.

Bob