Is Google complaining about nodebb or something else?

omega

@NodeHam Approx how much time?

gotwf

@NodeHam said in Google constantly complains about nodebb forums:

organically is all we have

Mayhaps we should elaborate on our definitiion(s) for 'organically'?

I have found this term can be used as a catch-all and mean different things to different world views.

NodeHam

It's over a year, maybe a year and a half to two.

I found that the sitemaps were not useful to Google so as I said, I've changed them to what I show above.
That could explain why since I'm not sure when those would have been submitted but likely around the time that nodebb was started for us.
Can someone confirm my question about sitemaps?

omega

@gotwf Probably as per GA traffic break-outs as the top two are usually organic and direct.

julian

@NodeHam in the Google search console, you should be able to query specific URLs to see whether they are indexed, and if not, then the reason why not.

Could you perhaps try that with a couple of topic links, and see what shows up?

NodeHam

Yes, I've looked at what is getting indexed but it's confusing to me why some posts get indexed and others don't.
I'll keep trying to get Google to look again now that I've removed the one xml from the sitemap list.

julian

@NodeHam The only site map you should submit is /sitemap.xml (e.g. community.nodebb.org/sitemap.xml). Google will take the links from the pages that link out from this sitemap.

NodeHam

That's what I originally started with then while testing, put the three that are found in that link into Google.
I've cut it back to the single URL now so maybe that will help.

Thanks for letting me know. I'll keep an eye on it and update.

julian

@baris did a deep dive on this one over the last two days and figured out why we were seeing ?lang=en-GB in the search console.

I don't know right now what effect that will have on SEO, but given that the query string parameter was superfluous, I don't expect to see any harm in it.

NodeHam

What I see is Google finding a ton of things that it complains about.
Like you pointed out, some of those were in fact left over from our previous forum software/links but I'll keep an eye open as this progresses to see which might be directly related to NodeBB in case it can help.

<baris>

For reference the reason and fix is here
https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB/issues/10993#issuecomment-1287028878

NodeHam

Here is one such URL in the non indexed list that Google provides.
When I go to this link, I see the thread that was posted so I know it exists but Google says it cannot index it.

https://doh.com/topic/217/some-topic/27?lang=en-GB&page=4

LOL!!!! Don't use xxx to replace your domain

omega

Hanging around in pile of tabs a thing of direct interest and insight!

Google Says ‘Discovered - Currently Not Indexed’ Status Can Last Forever

‘Discovered - Currently not indexed’ in the Google Search Console Index Coverage report can potentially last forever, as the search engine doesn’t index every page.

Search Engine Journal (www.searchenginejournal.com)

What are you gonna do with that?

NodeHam

Not really understanding your post and mention of Google. Can you expand on your point.

omega

Click the link!

NodeHam

I understand the content, just wasn't sure what you were referring to specifically.
Anyhow, I've spent time going over everything and it's as best as it can be.
It doesn't seem to be a nodebb problem and just one of the things one needs to understand about Google.

I appreciate the input and feedback.