Not 301 Redirecting

brucey · Joined: 07 Jun 2008 Posts: 34

Hi

I installed a pre-mod seo phpbb3 on my other forum and now have done it for my new forum as well.

Everything seems fine, the pages are re-directing from the old URLs fine. However, when I test the 301 redirect, it says its 200, a direct link.

Do you know why this is?

No duplictate

Yes

Zero duplictate

Yes
Yes
ALL

.htaccess file

SeO · Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2008 9:19 am Post subject: Re: Not 301 Redirecting

It's normal, you're testing a private post, so you fell on the login without redirect as it should Wink

brucey · Joined: 07 Jun 2008 Posts: 34

Of course, I should have noticed that sorry lol

Then it will 301 once they are logged in. And bots will 301 straight away as they have bot access Very Happy

Thanks

SeO · Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2008 4:14 pm Post subject: Re: Not 301 Redirecting

brucey · Joined: 07 Jun 2008 Posts: 34

I'm not completely sure what you mean

I have some areas of my site which you need to be logged in to see. However, I still want bots to be able to view them to be able to index the topics. I have about 800 pages indexed which I need them to 301 and index the new URLs.

How should I go about doing this? I thought what I was doing was right

Thanks

SeO · Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2008 5:00 pm Post subject: Re: Not 301 Redirecting

The redirecting is ok with the zero duplicate, I was talking about setting custom auth to bots, like you said, private forum indexing.

Technically, it is cloaking, because you do not show the same content to bots and guests. Since Google did not talked about this case precisely, I find it a bit dangerous to use, because, what they say about cloaking is pretty clear :
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hlrm=en&answer=66355

brucey · Joined: 07 Jun 2008 Posts: 34

Thanks for your advice

Personally I feel this type of cloaking would be considered OK by Google, I dont think I will get penalized for it (too much)

Yeah it may be a bit risky, but, I feel a lot of forums do this, plus my forum will benefit more from those topics being indexed and a small amount of penalization is justifiable.

Thanks

SeO · Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2008 5:14 pm Post subject: Re: Not 301 Redirecting

Problem is, there is no small amount when it come to cloaking penalization, the answer usually is a blacklist. This does not mean that the risk is big, but that if it occurs, the damages will be really big.

brucey · Joined: 07 Jun 2008 Posts: 34

This is true

However, I feel Google is really referring to sites deliberately cloaking on a large scale to improve rank.

From my experience with forums, most other admins/forums I have known use the same method of allowing bots to index, but need to log in for users.

I'm pretty sure none of them have been black listed.

This is a basic option in phpbb3 permissions so I doubt everyone using those permission on phpbb3 is getting blacklisted.

SeO · Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2008 9:34 pm Post subject: Re: Not 301 Redirecting

I agree with you, but the other matter to care about is that is such penalization would take place, it would necessarily be when the site would have become big enough for google to get interested into it or for a competitor to post a spam report at google.

I agree that the principle is not exactly the same as trying to cheat, but still, scale and purpose are there, you do this to be better seen in search engine than a guest would see, and the scale only depend on the number of private forums, private content can very quickly be a great part in the end.

Only Google can clarify this point, I knew few who have sent mails, no answer came back on this, maybe you should at least give a try sending a mail to leave a proof you tried to get answers on what you are doing.

This being said, I still think that in this particular case, the risk isn't too big, but risk is not null.