Bubblewrap 3,815 Posted August 26, 2012 Report Share Posted August 26, 2012 I was out of interest looking who was on line/logged in (6.30 - 6.45) & noticed the following were listed Google,Facebook,Yahoo & Bing. Are these sites spying on us Quote Link to post Share on other sites
mick2me 3,033 Posted August 26, 2012 Report Share Posted August 26, 2012 The good news...You are not Paranoid Bubblewrap. The bad news...They are out to get you. However this is good news. I spent most of last night to bottom why Googlebot had shunned us for weeks. The Robot.txt file that directs (good) robots where they can read appears to have been the problem. http://nottstalgia.com/robots.txt I believe this may have been the offending line: Disallow: / Now removed and the bots are back. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Cliff Ton 10,567 Posted August 26, 2012 Report Share Posted August 26, 2012 I spent most of last night to bottom why Googlebot had shunned us for weeks. The Robot.txt file that directs (good) robots where they can read appears to have been the problem. http://nottstalgia.com/robots.txt Not sure....... I've just Googled two random subjects which I know are on Nottstalgia, "Aspley Hall" and "Old Nottingham Railways". In both cases within the Google results I'm still just getting this :- So, how does anyone find Nottstalgia through a search engine, if they've never visited it before? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Bubblewrap 3,815 Posted August 26, 2012 Author Report Share Posted August 26, 2012 If you Google Nottingham Railways or Aspley you get a better result. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Bubblewrap 3,815 Posted August 26, 2012 Author Report Share Posted August 26, 2012 Not sure....... I've just Googled two random subjects which I know are on Nottstalgia, "Aspley Hall" and "Old Nottingham Railways". In both cases within the Google results I'm still just getting this :- So, how does anyone find Nottstalgia through a search engine, if they've never visited it before? Just type in Nottingham Forums. Our forum is at the top of the page that is how I found it. Just realised this is my 500th post Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Cliff Ton 10,567 Posted August 26, 2012 Report Share Posted August 26, 2012 If you Google Nottingham Railways or Aspley you get a better result. Not here I didn't. Still no references to Nottstalgia Just type in Nottingham Forums. Our forum is at the top of the page that is how I found it. That's true, but the point I was making is that if you don't know Nottstalgia exists you probably wouldn't be typing "Nottingham Forums" in your search criteria, you'd only type the subject you were looking for Quote Link to post Share on other sites
.... 24 Posted August 26, 2012 Report Share Posted August 26, 2012 you probably wouldn't be typing "Nottingham Forums" in your search criteria, you'd only type the subject you were looking for Absolutely. Incidentally I typed in searches for 'Nottingham Railways' and 'Aspley' on Google. No sign of a link to Nottstalgia on the first five pages of results for either. I also experimented by typing in 'favourite bike ride nottingham' - purposely trying to bring up a thread I started a few weeks ago on here entitled 'A pictorial guide to my favourite bike ride'. No sign of a Nottstalgia link again but It brought it up the identically titled blog on my own site, second top of the list. Evidently there is still a problem. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Bubblewrap 3,815 Posted August 26, 2012 Author Report Share Posted August 26, 2012 If I want to find a forum on anything I just type in ********* forum. I found this forum this way & found 3 other forums I am a member of. It all boils down to how you word your search Quote Link to post Share on other sites
.... 24 Posted August 26, 2012 Report Share Posted August 26, 2012 As Cliff Ton says above, people are not necessarily looking for a forum, they're looking for a particular subject and therefore won't be typing the word 'forum'. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
mick2me 3,033 Posted August 26, 2012 Report Share Posted August 26, 2012 Visitors are generated by keyword searches that do not need to include 'forums' Googlebot has dropped all our results no doubt as a result of a faulty robots.txt file uploaded at the last update. That text file had a wild card disallow bot crawl. 'Disallow: /'. Which basically means Do not index www.nottstalgia.com So Google never reached www.nottstalgia.com/forums. I supposed that Google then dropped all our indexed pages. So no Keyword search visitors. Since new file uploaded we are now being crawled by Bing Yahoo and Google. It will take time for Google to restore our results. Then we will have to deal with Google Panda and Penguin's rules. And no one really knows what rules they apply? Webmasters can only guess and try to comply. Our new Header in the home page could break those rule. Multiple links on our site to the same page. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Cliff Ton 10,567 Posted September 1, 2012 Report Share Posted September 1, 2012 Good news........ Google has rediscovered Nottstalgia. If you put a phrase like "old railways nottingham" or "hyson green shops", your results will now show Nottstalgia threads which include those topics and words. For the last few months, that wasn't happening. It may result in a burst of new people dropping in. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
mick2me 3,033 Posted September 1, 2012 Report Share Posted September 1, 2012 It has according to our stats and new members. According to the bottom of the forum index Google is permanently with us with visits from Yahoo and Bing Facebook seems to be reading permanently as well. Whats all that about? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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