[INFO] How gogle PHPBB!

[R. U. Serious]

Ok, I think I got a better idea. The change in page_header as mentioned above by netclectic will only work for counting the umber of online guests.

Instead the following change (hopefully) will stop sessions being even created for Googlebot. In sessions.php find

[cut] Wait, not a good idea. Let me think about this some more...
If it is getting no session at all (which was my idea at first), it will not index some pages, e.g. those with votes in it and if you have a vote on your index it won't see anything). It might have other side effects, too.
So I am thinking about another way...

[netclectic]

Cool! This looks more promising. 8)

Cheers!

[fishfreek]

Ok, Now I am confused.

Whats the code I need to add and where to keep phpbb from recording each and every googlebot as a new guest?

[netclectic]

[cut] Wait, not a good idea. Let me think about this some more...
If it is getting no session at all (which was my idea at first), it will not index some pages, e.g. those with votes in it and if you have a vote on your index it won't see anything). It might have other side effects, too.
So I am thinking about another way...

I'm currently using the method you posted here without any apparent problems and it definitly seems to be the best answer to date, no hundred of entries in the sessions table for google, no spurious guests appearing in whos online and google appears to be indexing my site

Admittedly i dont have any polls on my index page. Have you discovered any othere side effects?

Anyway, i look forward to hearing what you come up with!

[hijacker]

Very interested topic... But I can't find exactly what is needed to be done in order to let google index all the topics in the forum.

Can someone please sum it up in one single topic.

Thanks a lot!

[icehousedesigns]

Put the code in the first post as stated in sessions.php...and save. Of course, Googlebot will only crawl the forum if it finds it. So make sure your forum is linked from your main page and across the rest of your site...and of course that will only work if Google indexes your site on a monthly basis as well.

[netclectic]

To submit your site to google - http://www.google.com/addurl.html

[hijacker]

Got it... Thanks... Will try it ASAP.

[icehousedesigns]

Looks like your site is already indexed by Google, so just applying the patch to sessions.php should do the trick.

http://216.239.39.100/search?sourceid=n ... ash.com%2F

[TC]

hi all -

ok, so it seems we have two or three people who have worked this out since this thread started. can any/all of you come up with some definitive documentation for this? PM me.

[Techie-Micheal]

OK thanks, I'll go along with that... and save the paranoia for another day!

lol. I was wondering that myself so you aren't alone.

[R. U. Serious]

hi all -

ok, so it seems we have two or three people who have worked this out since this thread started. can any/all of you come up with some definitive documentation for this? PM me.

Hi TC, to achieve what is posted in the first post of this thread, apply the mod I posted there (3rd post in this thread: http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.ph ... 214#193214 )

If you further wish to restrict google to use only a single session, do the following. This will prevent google from appearing numerous times on the guest/who-is-online list (and record).

Code: Select all

################################################################# 
## MOD Title: GoogleSingleSession (Add-On to enhance-google-indexing )
## MOD Author: - R. U. Serious 
## MOD Description: This MOD will give all 'guests' where the useragent
##		    contains 'Googlebot' one session (static session_id)
##		    Hence it will only appear as a single guest.
##
## MOD Version: 0.9
## 
## Installation Level: (easy) 
## Installation Time: 5 Minutes 
## Files To Edit: includes/sessions.php  
############################################################## 
## For Security Purposes, Please Check: http://www.phpbb.com/mods/downloads/ for the 
## latest version of this MOD. Downloading this MOD from other sites could cause malicious code 
## to enter into your phpBB Forum. As such, phpBB will not offer support for MOD's not offered 
## in our MOD-Database, located at: http://www.phpbb.com/mods/downloads/ 
############################################################## 
## Author Notes: This is only an Add-ON. You will not notice anything with only this mod
##       installed. Please consider installing another MOD to enhance Google-indexing
##       http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=193214#193214
##       ( enhance-google-indexing )
############################################################## 

#-----[ OPEN ]------------------------------------------ 
# 
includes/sessions.php 

# 
#-----[ FIND ]------------------------------------------ 
# 
$session_id = md5(uniqid($user_ip));

# 
#-----[ REPLACE WITH ]------------------------------------------ 
#
# Note: d8ef2eab is one of the googlecrawlbots ips
#
//$session_id = md5(uniqid($user_ip));
global $HTTP_SERVER_VARS;
$session_id = ( !strstr($HTTP_SERVER_VARS['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ,'Googlebot') ) ? md5(uniqid($user_ip)) : md5(d8ef2eab);


# 
#-----[ FIND ]------------------------------------------ 
# 
	else
	{
		$sessiondata = '';
		$session_id = ( isset($HTTP_GET_VARS['sid']) ) ? $HTTP_GET_VARS['sid'] : '';
		$sessionmethod = SESSION_METHOD_GET;
	}


# 
#-----[ AFTER ADD ]------------------------------------------ 
#
	global $HTTP_SERVER_VARS;
	if ( empty($session_id)  && strstr($HTTP_SERVER_VARS['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ,'Googlebot') )
	{
		$sessiondata = '';
		$session_id = md5(d8ef2eab);
		$sessionmethod = SESSION_METHOD_GET;
	}


# 
#-----[ FIND ]------------------------------------------ 
# 

			if ( $ip_check_s == $ip_check_u ) 

# 
#-----[ REPLACE WITH ]------------------------------------------ 
#

	//		if ( $ip_check_s == $ip_check_u ) 
			if (( $ip_check_s == $ip_check_u ) || ($session_id == md5(d8ef2eab)&&(strstr($HTTP_SERVER_VARS['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ,'Googlebot'))))

# 
#-----[ SAVE/CLOSE ALL FILES ]------------------------------------------ 
# 
# EoM 

[TC]

thank you. 8)

[chinch]

great stuff here.

will sessions.php from 2.02 work with 2.00? I have not updated due to several hacks and the last bit of code is different. any advice appreciated... currently my phpBB is not found in google

[davidh44]

If a forum has thousands of topics, wouldn't allowing Googlebot to index the pages cause a huge increase in bandwidth? I'm assuming the googlebot would go through every single topic and every single page of that topic (which could multiply the number of pages spidered quite dramatically).

Another concern is if Google might think a site with 10,000 pages might be fishy. For example, if you have a forum dedicated to a topic in which its keywords are what you want people to find you by through Google. And the keywords are used very frequently through all the posts in that forum. If you have 1000 pages worth all with those keywords, does Google treat them as internal "spam" pages to try to get your domain littered through Google when someone searches for that keyword? I've never done a search which turned up pages and pages of forum links from one site.
If your non-forum pages on the same domain already have high rankings, I don't know if you'd want to risk getting your site knocked down for some perceived violation by the google computer.

Then again, if other forum software don't have any session id issues blocking Google indexing, then I'm sure Google has figured out a way to handle it. I doubt they'd want to index large forums with hundreds of thousands of pages, many of which might dissappear at the next automatic pruning.