We all know that google doesn't like to index dynamic pages. However, I just checked up on the latest daniweb.com pages indexed by google, and guess what I found?

Google has indexed just about every member's profile page, but not the forum threads! The member profile pages contain less original content, and contain the same number of variables in the URL (e.g. member.php?u=1 as opposed to showthread.php?p=100) Why is this, and how could I get google to index the important pages instead of the meaningless ones?

that is very odd. i'm sure you know your site better than anyone so think about a site map in your mind. think how google could have gotten there without seeing/indexing these pages. that's the only advice i can give.

Google indexes my forums threads, perhaps you have a robots.txt that is filtering out showthread.php.

Im running phpBB, but I dont think that should matter. Definatly check to see if there is a robots.txt file anywhere in your public_html folder. If you find one, check to see if showthread.php is located anywhere.

Nope, no robots.txt. I'm putting some more effort into this since a few weeks ago when I first posted, and it's getting a bit better. A number of threads are indexed now.

Jibtronic, have you tried using the phpBB search-engine friendly hack? It's awfully good. You can find it via phphacks.com and it's the one that uses mod rewrite and an .htaccess file.

It lets you convert all viewtopic.php?t=100 threads into URLs like t100.html because we all know how much google likes static URLs better than dynamic URLs.

I actually wrote my own version of this mod for my own use awhile back (when this forum ran off of phpBB). But I never released it. Guess someone else finally did

Google will now log variables but it has some blocked like ?id=(n) so I guess that ?p= is one of the ones that are blocked

Google doesn't necessarily have certain variables such as ?id= blocked. What it is is that Google doesn't want to index URLs containing a session ID (that long value like 8482349809934 ...) ... if you don't know what I'm talking about, check out any page on Amazon.com

In any case, Google doesn't block variables such as ?id= or ?sid= but rather any variable that has a value that resembles a session ID.

Regardless, I found out my problem. I was doing a google serch for site:www.daniweb.com daniweb to return all URLs in the daniweb.com domain that contain the word "daniweb" - basically to estimate how many of my pages are indexed with Google. Apparently my member profile pages just had the word "daniweb" more prominently than my other pages, which wouldn't display until I clicked on the "show all pages" link at the end of the Google search results.

Regardless, guests have now been prohibited from viewing member pages, so Google won't see this anymore anyways site:www.daniweb.com daniweb

Do this:
allinurl:
instead of
site:

vBulletin3 is exceptionally good for SEO purposes. Good choice, cscgal.

Hi Brian.

Seeing you here suggests something about the value of the forum links.

By the way I can see GPR 3 on this very thread, so it is indexed.

I've found that time is the best thing for indexing forums. As long as a hack is installed. Your pages will all get indexed eventually.