Administrative and Maintenance Tools - vBSEO Google/Yahoo Sitemap Generator

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

[Antivirus]

Originally Posted by yayvb

So does anyone know of how I could edit this plugin to incorporate member profiles?

Isn't it just a setting in the mod's options to include member profiles in the sitemap?

[djbaxter]

(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.

I missed this part. I now have two tasks listed for this add-on. The older one can be disabled but no longer has an option to delete.

How do I get rid of it?

Never mind: deleted it using phpMyAdmin.

Addendum: ^^^ which turned out to be a bad idea. I'm not sure why this task has no description but it seems to be required for compression of the sitemap files and perhaps other functions. Reinstalled to add it back in.

It would be nice if this had something to describe its prupose.

[bagpiper]

Hello,

I have installed a new version of this mod into VB 3.6 and it appears to be working. The sitemap was generated and saved to the /data folder.

When I attempted to enter the url of the sitemap into google webmaster site (ie: http://www.myforums.com/sitemap_index.xml.gz) it states that the file can not be found.

I pasted a copy of the sitemap_index.xml.gz under the /forums directory to see if it works and it does.

Is there something I need to change in the .htaccess file ?

Thanks,

[djbaxter]

Yes. See the instructions for the mod.

[kontrabass]

Since installing this and sending Google a sitemap every day for the past month, my search result ranking (for specific terms like "bass guitar") have dropped. For the past 3+ years I've been in the top few results for 'bass guitar'. Now I'm not even on the first page anymore.

Am I out of line blaming this mod? My google PageRank has remained steady at 6/10... I'm sending Google a 4 million URL sitemap everyday - maybe it's too much data?

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by kontrabass

Am I out of line blaming this mod?

Yes. All this add-on does is create a sitemap. If your rankings have dropped, it's because of factors having to do with Google, not the add-on.

The fact that public PR is constant is irrelevant, especially since it may not even accurately reflect actual PR. Higher PR does, however, generally increase the frequency of spidering. Beyond that, your rankings depend on "over 100 factors" - and one of the biggest is what's happening for that specific search term on other sites also ranking for the search term.

Note that a sitemap doesn't guarantee that Googlebot will change it's crawling patterns.

[kontrabass]

Thanks for the info.

One thing I've noticed is that the 'top' url in the sitemap I generate is my forum URL "www.mysite.com/forum". But I use vbadvanced with a homepage of "www.mysite.com". vbSEO is installed in my forum directory. I have set the sitemap URL set to my root homepage (www.mysite.com). I have also enabled the vba addon. Still though the root URL is listed as www.mysite.com/forum. Google obviously knows my homepage - but is it important for the sitemap to 'get it right' ?

[djbaxter]

I don't use either vBadvanced or vBSEO (except for the sitemap add-on).

However, this may help:

How to ensure that your sitemaps can be found by ANY search engine...

Discovering Sitemaps
Brent Hands, Program Manager, Live Search

When we first teamed up with Google and Yahoo to support sitemaps as an industry standard, it was with the express intention of driving the protocol forward. Making it into a simple, effective way to tell all search engines about the structure of your site.

Today, I'm happy to announce the latest addition to the protocol: Sitemap Autodiscovery. Autodiscovery gives siteowners the ability to easily share their sitemaps with all search engines at once, without the overhead of manually submitting them to each one. In order to share your sitemap with the crawlers at large, you simply provide the following line in your robots.txt file:

Sitemap: <sitemap_location>

where <sitemap_location> is the complete URL of your Sitemap Index File (or your sitemap file, if you don't have an index file). This directive is independent of the user-agent. so as long as it is present in the robots.txt file, all engines will be able to find your sitemaps. I see this as an important extension to the protocol, as it removes the need to individually submit sitemaps to each engine - simply add one line to your robots.txt file, and we will find your new and updated sitemaps automatically.

Although we aren't ready to start consuming sitemaps quite yet, I encourage you to build a sitemap and add the "sitemap" directive to your robots.txt. As soon as we roll out support (before the end of the year), we will be able to start crawling your sitemap files immediately. If you want more detail on the sitemaps protocol, including autodiscovery, check out www.sitemaps.org.

This is also endorsed by Yahoo! -

Webmasters Can Now Auto-Discover With Sitemaps

Since working with Google and Microsoft to support a single format for submission with Sitemaps, we have continued to discuss further enhancements to make it easy for webmasters to get their content to all search engines quickly.

All search crawlers recognize robots.txt, so it seemed like a good idea to use that mechanism to allow webmasters to share their Sitemaps. You agreed and encouraged us to allow robots.txt discovery of Sitemaps on our suggestion board. We took the idea to Google and Microsoft and are happy to announce today that you can now find your sitemaps in a uniform way across all participating engines. To do this, simply add the following line to your robots.txt file:

Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

Please provide the complete URL for your Sitemap on this line. We will pick it up wherever you put it in your robots.txt file. This directive is not specific to user-agent. If you have multiple Sitemaps, you can point to your Sitemap index file on this line. Details about the Sitemaps protocol including this addition are available on the protocol website -- http://www.sitemaps.org.

If you prefer, you can continue to issue Sitemaps to Yahoo! Search by simply inputting the URL for your Sitemap and submitting. Or add feeds to a site you are already managing under 'My Sites' in Site Explorer. This also allows us to provide more feedback to you about what we are doing with the sitemap.

We're also happy to have some east coasters, Ask and IBM, announce their support for Sitemaps. The more the merrier!

[SoftDux]

Great script, thank you

[kontrabass]

Sorry - I didn't mean to say I had vbSEO installed - just this sitemap mod. The sitemap autodiscovery protocol is very interesting - thanks.

I get a lot of different answers reading through these threads... I'm not really concerned about using a vbadvanced addon as I only have one vba page (my homepage). But for those who's home page is not their forum index, how should be ideally go about getting our root home page listed as the sitemap's top level location?