Miscellaneous Hacks - vBnoindex - Auto hide thin / shallow content from Google and avoid the Panda penalty!

Increase SEO, traffic, time on site and page views per visit!

This mod will add the meta noindex tag to threads with a word count equal or below the setting you specify.

The Theory:

If you pay any attention to Google these days you will have heard of the 'Panda' updates that were let lose at the start of 2011. In leymans terms Google believes it has come up with a better way to detect spam or content farms (this seems to include big forums with lots of content). Google has automated the detection process and every 4 weeks or so they run the system, the web is crawled and the winners get higher traffic and the losers lose upto 80% or theirs.

Although it is not known exactly how to avoid 'Panda' there are some things that most top SEO's are starting to say. The main two things seem to be thin or shallow content and low user engagement, so poor page views per visit or poor time spent per visit. The two actually come hand in hand, fix one and you fix the other.

Most vBulletin forums have tons of content, pages and pages of threads, some long, some thin. Now although not all thin pages are bad, most dont hold a user for more than a few seconds, most do not encourage a user to register or reply, they are mostly low value. If you have a high ratio of these pages, compared to quality, lengthy, high engagement pages then you will eventually be hit by panda and lose upto 80% of your traffic. So 500 thin introduction type threads can cause your 50 10,000 word PHD articles to tank in the rankings, for example.

The MOD:

This MOD lets you set a minimum thread word count, the noindex meta tag will then be placed into any thread having this many words or below, thus stopping Google from crawling the page. This will show google that all your content is lengthy and any visits from Google search to the lengthy pages still being crawled and indexed with have high engagement metrics, making you more appealing to Google's algorithm further.

It's a crude way of doing things, but the only other option to large forum owners is to rewrite 1,000's of threads or manually inspect them and block accordingly. You'd be doing so for years to come.

The Install:

1- Import the package.
2- Set min word count in options>thread display options (showthread)

What word count setting do I use?

This depends on the forum. For example I have a 20k thread forum, that had lost 80% of it's traffic overnight, since june. I started at 50 words, then 100, now upto 200 to start seeing a recovery. So i hide all threads with 200 words or less from Google. All this means is by setting this at 200 i hide enough content to swing the balance, ie; the bad now doesn't outweigh the good.

If you have 1000 threads, and just 5 are below say 1000 words, you will probably never be hit by Panda anyway, because your content is long and engages users for many minutes.

Start low and increase the setting until you see you traffic increase or recover, it sounds insane to block content to increase traffic but it is about hiding the bad that is dragging the good down. It is no longer ok to let Google decide what to rank and what to sink, they want YOU to put your best stuff in the shop windows and lock the rest in the basement, hidden from customers.

Why is this MOD for owners not hit by Panda also?

By hiding your thin content, people will not be able to find it via Google search, this means they will only find your long in depth pages when coming from Google. So yes, you may lose 5% of your visits short term (Google wont be sending much to these pages anyway) but long term your time on site and pages per visit will increase and you longer, more popular threads and thus site overall will be rewarded.

I think ive explained things as best I can. There is a linkback in the package, this MOD could save your site from extinction so its a big deal and I gotta pay the bills. If you must remove it by whatever means then go ahead but I wont be offering any support if you do.

Based on the nature of playing with Googles algorithm I will say I make no guarantees and this is at your own risk, if you are not well versed on SEO then I would avoid using this MOD or get the advice of a experienced friend.

-Hybrid

[Manoel J?nior]

Installed! I tested!

[Dave Hybrid]

Got a couple of new features to add this week.

Noindex,follow category pagination ie pages 2-xx.

Other than page 1 these do not need to be indexed.

[kingMOB]

Hi Dave,

what happens when a thread that was previously marked by the plugin grows above the min word count? The noindex meta tag is removed from it?

Is there a way to add a delay to the plugin action, so newly created threads can be indexed and just audited by the plugin, let's say, after a day?

[Dave Hybrid]

Yes, the tag would be removed and the page indexed within the next few crawls.

The no index tag is not like robots.txt it still allows the pages to be crawled, just not indexed.

Remove the tag and Google will see when it crawls the pages as normal, and add the page back into the index.

There is no need to add any delay.

[Dave Hybrid]

Any feature requests?

I'm thinking adding option to noindex member and album pages also.

[karlm]

Does this mod not counter google's terms? I understand google has it that sites which use techniques to 'hide' content are punished - and as this is 'hiding' content, these sites using it will be thusly punished.

Or, is there something I've missed?

[Dave Hybrid]

Googles terms? What terms?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjRGkc__FwQ

Here is a Google made video promoting the noindex tag to 'hide' any content you feel shouldnt be in Googles index.

I'm not sure you really understand. It's standard webmaster practice, nothing shady...

[kingMOB]

How about an option to include manually threads in a list so they'll not be indexed?

[cykelmyggen]

Originally Posted by karlm

Does this mod not counter google's terms? I understand google has it that sites which use techniques to 'hide' content are punished - and as this is 'hiding' content, these sites using it will be thusly punished.

Or, is there something I've missed?

Maybe you're thinking of the cloaking technique?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloaking

[cosy]

imo this option should be included by default

also if this can be compatible w/ vaultwiki will be awesome