New UKBF design = less google spidering of posts?

[theMBA]

I've noticed that, after the change from the old to the new UKBF design, my posts are no longer appearing in Google searches. I used to find quite a few of my posts when doing Google searches on related topics. Now, I haven't seen any of my posts in Google search results for a few days. Has anyone else experienced this?

 

[Tin]

Yes, I noticed weeks ago the new forum isn't especially engine friendly, good job I'm not relying on my sig links to promote my site. That's the downside to a forum, you build up links slowly and naturally via posts over a mid term period, the forum changes radically, all the links go 'pop' in one go, then if they suddenly appear again in one foul swoop it looks to the engines as though you've simply purchased the links (link spike) so any link benefit from them won't kick in for ages. The true benefit of links over time is lost.

It pays not to rely on link weight that is likely to be volatile.

 

[Ozzy]

Yeah, sorry about that. Not much could do about it though as the old software used redirects for spidering, where as this one has a "archive" that is spiderable plus a Google XML sitemap. So it will spike soon and Google is crawling these forums.
On the plus side, it is unlikely to change again

 

[theMBA]

Thanks Ozzy,
Hopefully, the Google spidering will, over time, use the posts on the new-design forum to elevate our Google rankings.