vBSEO removed - here are some Google Analytics

[cellarius]

Since this has been asked several times by now, here is what happened when I removed vBSEO from my vB3 site. If anything, vB4 would be expected to do better. Although it's certainly not really a SEO-dream come true, out of the box it sure should be superior to vB3 on that front. This also means I returned to vB3 standard URLs, nothing of the fancy stuff vB4 offers

What I did beforehand: I made sure all my thread, forum and profile Urls were properly redirected (301) to the standard URLs. I did not bother for anything else. My URL structure was pretty custom - when I installed vBSEO, there were no standard settings on offer yet, if I remember correctly. So I did my own RedirectRules for .htaccess. Of course, I had threadids, userids and forumids present in the URLs, which makes things pretty straightforward. If you chose to remove them from the URLs, you will probably learn now why exactly this was a bad idea

Anyway, here are some Goolge Analytics graphs, all absolute numbers removed.

Attachment 151705

The first one shows the number of visitor sessions during a six months period in 2013 (orange, with vBSEO) compared to the exact same period in 2014 (blue, without vBSEO). As you can see, there is not much difference. If anything, the blue one without vBSEO does better. Since my forum is in a limited niche and I'm not actively expanding, that would be about all the growth that I'd expect. The decline in the second half is due to normal variation during the year.

Attachment 151706

This is underlined by the second graph, showing roughly a three month period of 2014. The removal of vBSEO happened pretty much in the middle of that period. Again, hardly any effect can be noticed, if at all. Surely no crash or anything.

In short: removing vBSEO had no effect at all - for my site.

Again, this is what happened to my site. Your experience may vary, of course. And no, I'm not interested in doing custom removals of vBSEO, not even for money, and I won't answer requests by PM. Use this information as you see fit, and draw your own conclusions.