phpBB • Free and Open Source Forum Software

For a demonstration, I will say that I am viewing topic 1 in forum 2.

Pagination for forums works fine, but pagination for topics does not.

If I view the pagination for this topic from viewforum.php?f=2, I see these URLs:

./viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1&start=0
./viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1&start=40
./viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1&start=80
./viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1&start=120
./viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1&start=160

If I am within the topic and I view its pagination, I see these URLs(which point to the same pages):

./viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1&st=0&sk=t&sd=a
./viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=40
./viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=80
./viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=120
./viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=160

Search engines view these URLs as pointing to *different pages*, and it wastes search engines' time (because it makes them index the same content) and makes phpbb boards more difficult to search.

It would make more sense if the t, st, sk and sd variables were included in the pagination links for the topics displayed from viewforum.php.

I would say... the other way around. Omit them if they have the default value (else they need to be there).

If they are included, then the content at the url will be basically static. If they are omitted, then a search engine might index a page and said page's content might change.

Regarding ./viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=40

The content at this url will be basically the same regardless of whether an administrator has changed the default sort order, default number of days worth of posts displayed or number of posts per page. If the posts per page are changed, it will just lead to more content being added at the bottom of the page, but the page will be basically what a search engine has already indexed.

With this url: ./viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1&start=40

The content and order of content might change depending on if the default sort order is changed. If the page was indexed yesterday when posts were by default displayed from oldest to newest, and if today posts are now displayed from newest to oldest, the page's content and order will be different.

I wrote a script to automatically generate a sitemap and submit it to google every day, and omitting the variables seems like it will lead to more work by Google and less effective indexing.

What would be even better is if they were omitted unless the viewer was a bot.

I agree with Acyd Burn, think the "unneeded" arguments should be omnited for users. About adding them for bots, i think it should not be added. The content may change, but i think reindexing the posts is less of a problem than duplicate content.