(03-12-2024, 04:36 PM)Spacebar Wrote: I've always wondered why forum topics are all hidden from Google. If you Google something like "my headphones won't connect, moodeaudio forums", the top result is generally going to be another website. It's a bit annoying IMO because whether I'm searching a forum site or Reddit, I prefer to use Google, since built in search functions are generally inferior. 

Anyone know?

(03-12-2024, 04:36 PM)Spacebar Wrote: If you Google something like "my headphones won't connect, moodeaudio forums", the top result is generally going to be another website.

(03-12-2024, 04:36 PM)Spacebar Wrote: I've always wondered why forum topics are all hidden from Google. If you Google something like "my headphones won't connect, moodeaudio forums", the top result is generally going to be another website. It's a bit annoying IMO because whether I'm searching a forum site or Reddit, I prefer to use Google, since built in search functions are generally inferior. 

Anyone know?

(04-02-2024, 07:10 AM)challenge Wrote: Moode forum and website do show up in the search results, but it seems it can't read or don't want to read the contents.


it shows a "Learn why" help thing, and if you're owner of the website it says that there's something not configured correctly in your robots.txt.
That points here:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7489871


Truth is that your robots.txt seems fine... there's something google doesn't like about the site. 
You are missing a sitemap for example.
Don't know if mybb now does it with or without additional extensions.
IIRC there was a google seo plugin for mybb to automate these things.
But you should have a sitemap in your robots.txt like this:

Code:

Sitemap: https://www.mywebsite.com/sitemap/
Sitemap: https://www.mywebsite.com/forum/sitemap-index.xml

and once it's accessible submit it through google webmaster tools and it'll index correctly the contents.
also give a look at what's showing up in google's Search Console, if it says something there.
SEO can be a pain, but this shouldn't be too hard.

Albeit I am trying to degoogle completely (as IMHO "Google is evil" and too powerful, personal thing), it still would be useful if the forum showed up correctly in the results instead of "No information is available for this page".
The issue is that diyaudio outranks this when you search something about moode and people are getting sent to that hundred pages long diyaudio thread (a mess).

1. ABP sitemap https://community.mybb.com/mods.php?action=view&pid=1279
   
2. Google SEO https://community.mybb.com/mods.php?action=view&pid=789 , github
   

(04-02-2024, 12:34 PM)challenge Wrote: I don't have recent experience with mybb, but by googling I think you should install an extension on this mybb forum that creates a sitemap file so that it updates the sitemap dynamically and automatically.
You could do it manually for small websites, but forums change, grow, let's say you add sections etc you should manually update the thing everytime...

A quick google in the mybb community website shows me there are two modules as option:

1. ABP sitemap https://community.mybb.com/mods.php?action=view&pid=1279
   
2. Google SEO https://community.mybb.com/mods.php?action=view&pid=789 , github
   

pick one.
the first one does just the sitemap and easier to setup and seems more recently updated, 
the second one do a lot of more complex stuff, such as meta tags, redirects, error pages, has a github with more detail but more old etc

After having a publicly accessible sitemap file then you must link it in the robots.txt like I wrote in the previous post and google will find it next it will crawl. 
But I suggest also to submit the thing to google through their "google search console" tool so that happens faster.
a simple guide on that:
https://www.semrush.com/blog/submit-sitemap-to-google/

~~
Agree that the issue seems to happen only with google. They've become extremely picky through the years.
Happened to me too in past and had to submit the thing.
Provided there are no other issues like htaccess redirects, wrong file permissions, half hacked mods, or stuff like that.