Administrative and Maintenance Tools - vBSEO Google/Yahoo Sitemap Generator

vBSEO Search Engine XML Sitemap 3.0
We are extremely pleased to inform the vBulletin.org community that a fully revamped version of the vBSEO Search Engine XML Sitemap (previously "vBSEO Google/Yahoo Sitemap Generator") v.3.0, is being released to all licensed vBulletin users effective immediately!

Note: The NEW vBSEO Search Engine XML Sitemap 3.0 replaces all previous versions of the "vBSEO Google/Yahoo Sitemap Generator", and includes support for all the new URL types in vBulletin 4.x.

New in the vBSEO Search Engine XML Sitemap v.3.0
The new sitemap alters the way data is structured in fundamental ways. Sitemap 3.0 segments different content areas into separate files, so you end up with a unique set of files per content type: forums, blogs, cms, groups, albums, members, tags, etc. In addition, the new sitemap has an extended priority feature that utilizes the built in 'weight' tool of the vBulletin XML sitemap generator for individual forums, CMS sections and articles to act as a multiplier.

We believe these changes are responsible for delivering increased returns for a number of forums from customers and testers we've been tracking. Please track your own progress via your Google Webmaster tools account, Google Analytics or Gravity Insights.

A Clean and Beautiful Interface
The new sitemap also features a clean and beautiful interface, built from the ground up. We believe it reflects the quality, precision and attention to detail placed into each aspect of this release. We are passionate about building software, and great software is beautiful inside, and out.

Overview
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The "vBSEO Search Engine XML Sitemap" plugin provides an easy to use solution that allows your forum to be indexed by all major search engines, including Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask, 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 3.5.x versions. The current version is vBSEO 3.5.2. If you are running vBSEO, please upgrade to vBSEO 3.5.2 (or greater) before installing for optimal results.

Compatibility
============================

Fully compatible with:

• vBulletin 3.8.x, 4.0.x, 4.1.x
• vBulletin Blogs *Optional
• vBulletin CMS *Optional
• vBSEO 3.5.2 + higher *Optional

What does it do?
============================

• Auto-generates an XML sitemap for all of your specified forum URL types (including vBulletin Blog & CMS URLs).
• NEW! Groups forum areas into individual sitemaps grouped by section type for greater flexibility, for example:
  • sitemap_forum_X.xml.gz
  • sitemap_tags_X.xml.gz
  • sitemap_cms_X.xml.gz
• Auto-notifies Search Engines when a new sitemap is generated (optional)
• Automatically sends you a summary of the sitemap generation via email each time it is created (optional)
• Includes only publicly accessible forums and threads and includes the option of not including any specific public forums
• Allows Search Engines to find all of your forum URLs without having to spider the forum to find the links. Great for Deep Page linking!
• Allows Search Engines to find your forum URLs without having to account for query string and/or session ID information.
• Allows Search Engines to give precedence to crawling your higher priority forum pages.
• Allows Search Engines 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, Yahoo Slurp, Ask's Teoma, Bing's msnbot, and other search engine bots.
• Is 100% compatible with the static CRUs (Content Relevant URLs) used by vBSEO-enabled forums.
• Is 100% compatible with the 'Friendly URLs' offered default with vb4.x.

How does it work?
============================

Whenever it is scheduled or invoked via the URL, this plugin will generate an XML formatted that search engines are able to read and parse. If you selected "Yes" to the Auto-notification setting, The 4 major search engines will be notified each time the sitemap is generated.

• Google Sitemap files are gzipped for space savings
• 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
============================

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 -> vBSEO -> vBSEO Sitemap Settings
  

Once you successfully login, you will see a number of tabs. Here are the 4 main links:

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.

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 (Identified by the Bot's name) 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.

Search Engine Bots Activity Log
Use it to track Search engine activity on your sitemaps. This area displays how often, and what volume of pages search engines visit your site on a daily basis.

Run Generator
The 'Run Sitemap Generator' link will automatically regenerate your vBSEO Search Engine XML Site sitemaps.

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

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

Installation, Upgrade, & Configuration
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Follow the installation/upgrade instructions provided in the docs/readme.html file.

Webmaster Accounts
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It is NOT required for you to have a Webmaster account on the search engines' websites to run the plugin, however, we recommend everyone set one up for tracking purposes.

• Google Webmaster Central. Get data about crawling, indexing and search traffic. Increase traffic to your site.
• Bing Toolbox
• https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/

Copyright & Licensing
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• vBSEO Search Engine XML Sitemap 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) ? 2010 Crawlability, Inc.

Revision History
============================

11/11/2010 - Version 3.0 Released
Compatible with vB3.7.x+ and vB4.x+
NEW FEATURE: All CMS URLs are supported
NEW FEATURE: Sitemap Groups by content type
NEW FEATURE: Enhanced layout and design of the Sitemap Generator Control Panel
NEW FEATURE: XSL Style sheet of the xml files for easier human reading
NEW FEATURE: Extended Priority. Utilizes the built in 'weight' tool of the vBulletin XML generator for all content areas (Forums, Blogs, CMS, Albums, etc.) to act as a multiplier. (vb4 Suite only)

Other vBSEO Plugins
============================

• vBSEO - vBulletin Search Engine Optimization

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

[Black Tiger]

If you have installed vbSeo too, you can better ask at the vbSeo.com support forums.

[aapkae]

please sir help me to solve this issue my users are gone i have 2 thousand guest in 5 minutes and now i seen 300 only where all the guest gone

and why webmaster tools shows that error



i have install 2.5 goolge yahoo sitemap generator

[khurtsiya]

Everything done straight by instruction but: Sitemap file not found
Help please!

[bozzawa]

i try to install vbSEO but when i put file .htaccess in root dir my web site crash and i got error 403 forbidden ecc ecc
if i remove that file the web site will be ok

[YankForum]

just wanted to say thank you 1 more time and tell other friends that this plugin is working great , if you cant make it work you must have a look on your codes to find your mistake

[max1982]

Hi guys
I have installed the Plugin and seem every thing is working apart from Replacing URLs with page Thread Title is not working i have checked the .htaccess and seems ok. but cannot seem to find any option regarding the Replacing URLs with page Thread Title on posts can any one help or tell me what should i do?

Thanks

[need2fart]

Originally Posted by max1982

Hi guys
I have installed the Plugin and seem every thing is working apart from Replacing URLs with page Thread Title is not working i have checked the .htaccess and seems ok. but cannot seem to find any option regarding the Replacing URLs with page Thread Title on posts can any one help or tell me what should i do?

Thanks

This is a sitemap generator. It does not include rewritten urls.

The full version of vbSEO includes that feature.

[akasej]

Hi Everyone -

I added this sitemap generator to my forum. Now, I am trying to submit my sitemap to google webmaster tools and I can't figure it out.

Is the "sitemap index" what I submit? If so, the url that is shown takes me to a 404(Page Not Found) Error.

Would one of you be able to tell me how to do this?

Thank you so much!

[Black Tiger]

I'm getting a often seen error that several search engines are not pinged.

Google ping: Successful.
Bing ping: FAILED.
Yahoo ping: FAILED.
Ask ping: FAILED.

As is to be read on vbseo, nothing could be done because Bing and Yahoo turned of this ping services.

However.... ask ping should still be working.
Also when I read on the vbseo forum, Bing ping IS still working this way:

http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.yoursite.com%2Fsitemap_index.xml.gz

But I can't reply there because I don't have vBSeo itself, only got this sitemap generator.

When I'm going to have a look into the code, I see this:

PHP Code:

           $vbseo_stat['pingbing'] = vbseo_sitemap_ping_one(
               'http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap='.urlencode($url),
            'Thanks for'); 


Is there no way to change those last lines so Bing will work again with the code supplied above? Or maybe I can put my forum url hardcoded in this code so it matches the working link mentioned aboven. But how would I have to change this exactly?

[Smitty]

Well.... I installed this about a month ago. For me it pings both Google and Bing. I did look at the output and the sitemap_index.xml.gz points to the sitemap files being located in my forum root rather than /forum/vbseo_sitemap/data/

I don't know enough to know what the scoop is, but after I run a sitemap, which I do about every 3 to 5 days, I *immediately* copy the sitemap files to my forum root with a 1 line "script" via ssh. This is an old mod and it hasn't been updated in a very long time so....

That said, I do not have vBSEO installed, so I may have missed something in the config. when I installed it.

I can not say whether a sitemap in a forum is important or not - I did it for the heck of it and haven't really noticed any difference. Google and Bing crawl either way.

A last thought is that many people argue (I believe correctly) that sitemaps are not of of significant value. Once a search engine "sniffs" your site it will crawl it. As long as you have laid out your site navigation well it should find everything. Maybe not as fast as you would like (and sitemaps do not give you a "magic" lift in the serps or a "faster" crawl), but I finally decided it can't (shouldn't?) hurt so I installed it and included it in my weekly schedule.

As always - YMMV

By the way - I decided to take a look at the index files. Despite what you set in the vBSEO preferences for the sitemap(s), it sets *yearly* as the update frequency. Not Good. After seeing that I may stop using it.

I think that right now, 20 September 2012, that this mod is seriously flawed.