Signatures not shown to guests in threads?

I notice that no signatures are shown to guest readers here on VBW, they only are seen when logged in.

Is this for SEO reasons and is it default with the new version of vBulletin :confused:

My boards are on version 3.5.0 and guests can see them. I couldn't even find a place to turn it off for guests in the Usergroup area.

http://www.vbwebmaster.com/forums/showthread.php?t=55

As a forum poster I hate this, I think it may or may not help SEO for the forum owners, where is the proof?

I do think most posters and forum users hate it!

As a forum poster I hate this, I think it may or may not help SEO for the forum owners, where is the proof?

I do think most posters and forum users hate it!

Yep! My posts add content to a site. My payment is the sig link. Without it, I tend to move on.

There needs to be some quid quo pro to keep members. Expecially in this arena IMO.

Let's have a revolt!

You damn right Noppid, I am leaving unless Joey gives me a 1000% raise tonight! This sucks man, tell Joey I said that!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~:eek: :mad:

ANthony - Ill give you a 2000% raise :) One condition - go to noppids forum andeducate them on Richard Nixon

As a forum poster I hate this, I think it may or may not help SEO for the forum owners, where is the proof?




I dont know yet - im testing it on this forum. I know it helps for bandwidth if you have alot of images in sigs - Im testing for things like PR now.

I like Noppid and I like TD, I can't help it all their kids are retards Joey!

Too much inbreeding going on in that family man! :eek: :D :p :wave:

If the image aint on your server, it's not using your bandwidth. ;)

Please explain how that works Noppid for us non coders, how in the hell do signature links avoid being on Joey's server? :confused:

Who's server are they on then old boy :confused:

I assume you mean the pretty pictures added to some signatures, not the text links in my signature that Joey quit running for guests.

You know this for sure Noppid, that Joey is in some real hot water at this time, don't you man ??? :confused:

Now he knows what it is like to be you all the time!!! :p

Yes, the image link code is here and the text link code. But the images are usually on the members site. So the bandwidth required to deliver the image comes from the member that owns the image and hosts it or the image hosting service they use.

You get him Noppid, we are gona smoke Joey out of his hole on this one man, we know he is hiding in the mountains somewhere and the members have him surrounded dude!:eek:

I say bring em on! :eek:

I dont do this for one reason:

It discourages visitors from registering...

The majority of my members promote their own sites via their sigs...it's very important to them. To hide these signatures from guests would be frustration for my members, it isn't worth it to me...Besides - how does it chew up bandwidth? As all signatures I know of are remotely hosted...the images arent hosted on your server

Joey is not stupid, he listens to his members.......

If the image aint on your server, it's not using your bandwidth. ;)

Easy - alot of my sigs (on my other forums) come from gallery pics.

I win...

Easy - alot of my sigs (on my other forums) come from gallery pics.

I win...

No, your members lose. You're missing our point. I disagree 100% with ya on this one.

Honestly, why should webmasters come here if they can't get a sig link or two for participating?

No, your members lose. You're missing our point. I disagree 100% with ya on this one.

Honestly, why should webmasters come here if they can't get a sig link or two for participating?


Dude - scroll up - read - im only testing it on this forum.

This is bad Joey, real bad man, Led Zeppelin is ****ed off too man! :eek: :eek: :eek: :mad:

Easy - alot of my sigs (on my other forums) come from gallery pics.

I win...

Simple solution Joey, you can ban images in signatures or come up with a hack that converts those to text links!

Or just flat out tell folks that use images as signatures that they will not show to guest visitors.

Those that use text links would have sig's show on both versions of the forum!

Someone tell me the SEO benefit of this removal of signatures?

Out Bound links are counted.

I don't see forums losing rank in the SERP's because of it!

Has anyone else seen this or have SEO benefits that happen because of this :confused:

You know...there is a mod over at vbulletin.org that optimizes signatures so that outbound links are actually not counted...it adds a ref=no follow or whatever to the end of all signatures...This means your members can still promote their sites, but you dont have to worry about their links counting against you for whatever reason...There are quite a few useful options with that mod also

Got a link on that GTAce :confused:

oops, I guess that would have been helpful, huh? lol

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=97685

Thanks man :)

Can you go into detail a little on what you know about this hack :confused: :o

To be honest with you, all I know is what it says there...Read the Overview, Features, and what not, hopefully that gives you a good idea of what it does. I really dont have a lot of SEO knowledge and have only had the mod installed for a few days...I just ran across it, saw it was easy to install (no template or code changes), have heard people complain about signatures affecting SEO, so I said "hmmm, why not?"

OK, any information is good information, thank you for your fine input on this! :o

I have started a thread on Minstrel's forum that is going to make a great impact on this issue and want all of you to be aware of this as it happens! :o

http://www.bandofgonzos.com/forum/index.php?topic=3724.0

In addition we want your comments in this thread and in the thread linked above on this very important issue to the entire forum circuit.:eek:

One thing you guys arent considering - 90% of forums have nothing to do with webmasters.

Why would the members on my car forum car about passing PR? Most of the links are going to cardomain or some free image host. Very few care whatsoever or even know about Pagerank.

What does that have to do with this forum filled with some of the best webmasters in the business Joey :confused:

The members here value their signature links more than members who post about cars or sports issues!

This is not the only forum I have problems with Joey, I am glad you have run this test because this issue is now visible to the entire community of forum owners, this can make them or break them if members are aware of this!

If I would have known about this before, you know that I would have raised the issue with you and now that I am aware of it I will let WebMastery know about it too since he is doing the same thing at this time! :eek:

You can bet my posts will go down to zero unless this is made right permanently!

Joey

There are a ton of forums out there all competing for the same webmaster attention. Just look at http://www.top100vbulletin.com/5 where I have 29 forums, all pretty much in the same space - and that's just the ones that meet the criteria - how many more on phpBB etc?

I answer 10x more questions than I ask. Why do I bother? A small part of the answer is because I get outbound links. Live bot-friendly outbound links. I'm not looking for business, but I do want to build my sites up so that I can boost the sites of my friends and so that one day I can capitalise on them.

Now, I agree that sig links aren't worth much but that's all the more reason to question why you risk antagonising your members by blocking them?

Joe has given us his word that they are going back up after he runs his tests Sarah, but I did quit another forum a few nights ago in a rage and this is a big issue now!

See Joey's answer here!

http://www.vbwebmaster.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12759&postcount=12

Members will be watching this issue close and so will forum owners as they will now market into it and use it as a tool in a good way!

If it was not for Joey running this test this would not have come to the attention of the entire forum community Sarah, so in a way we would not have brought light to this issue and become educated about it if not for this test that Joe is running! :o

I agree that sig links aren't worth much but that's all the more reason to question why you risk antagonising your members by blocking them?
My point exactly, Sarah.

However, to be fair to Joey, he is conducting a little test here and he has more than once indicated that live links will be returned after the next PR update when he can see the results of his experiment.

Of course, if he reneges on that promise, we'll all fly to Chicago and cut his balls off.

:eek:

No, no... I said "cut Joey's balls off", noppid... not yours. You're already married, aren't you? :D

wow, that's cold!

I can't help but suspect there's some hidden anomousity there in light of recent events!? :D

Of course, if he reneges on that promise, we'll all fly to Chicago and cut his balls off.


I'll be in Vegas that week.... :D

There is an option in the acp to turn off sigs to guests, and I use it. Due to the nature of our site, some sigs can be a bit on the... well... "adult" side, for lack of a better word, so if a kid happens by, I don't want them to be able to read it.

Fine. Be like that, then. But you should know that I've already mailed your post to my kids telling them there's no point in going to your forum :mad:

Joey

There are a ton of forums out there all competing for the same webmaster attention. Just look at http://www.top100vbulletin.com/5 where I have 29 forums, all pretty much in the same space - and that's just the ones that meet the criteria - how many more on phpBB etc?

I answer 10x more questions than I ask. Why do I bother? A small part of the answer is because I get outbound links. Live bot-friendly outbound links. I'm not looking for business, but I do want to build my sites up so that I can boost the sites of my friends and so that one day I can capitalise on them.

Now, I agree that sig links aren't worth much but that's all the more reason to question why you risk antagonising your members by blocking them?

Sarah most forums are using = no follow tags and that is fine with me, you are not going to get any link PR from these links but I don't want 10,250 links from forum signatures at DP.

I just want guests to see my damned signature because I DO NOT POST ON FORUMS AND CREATE CONTENT FOR FORUM OWNERS TO GET RIPPED OFF BY THEM AS THEY CASH IN ON MY CREATIVE WORK!

I can quit their forums and have done exactly that when I find out they are not showing signature links to guests!

Sarah most forums are using = no follow tags and that is fine with me
Well, it's definitely NOT fine with me.

1. there is NO reason, repeat NO REASON, to do this unless you are worried about "PR leak", WHICH IS A MYTH AND DOES NOT EXIST - there is no other reason and since that reason is invalid it means there is NO VALID REASON to do this.

2. if you are going to allow sig links and make them dead links, in my opinion that is simply dishonest - you are implying that sig links are OK and then sneakily deactivating them. At the very least, there should be a clear and public statement that your forum is doing this, in the "Member Profile" ir "User CP" page - anything else is simply dishonest.

Why is it deactivating the links?

They still are live links that work, they just do not give link pop Minstrel.

If the SE's devalue signature links on forums anyway the no follow tag just makes their life a bit better since they don't have to factor them!

PS: I can see this issue is much bigger than I thought and has a long way to go! :eek:

Joey does not have no follow on these links right now!

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But you will have to look at the code at each forum to see what they are doing Minstrel.

The header links here are "no follow" Minstrel as you see below!

<div align="right"> <font size="1" face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><a href="http://www.linkworth.com?a=307" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Buy / Sell Text Links</a> - <a href="http://www.vbwebmaster.com/links/browselinks.php?c=2" target="_blank"> Rate Your Web Host</a> - <a href="http://www.theforumzone.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> The Forum Zone</a> - <a href="http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/ad-network/?s=492" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Join The Free Coop Ad Network</a> -</font></div>

These are the links you see at the top of the page near the Logo!

Why is it deactivating the links?

They still are live links that work, they just do not give link pop Minstrel.

If the SE's devalue signature links on forums anyway the no follow tag just makes their life a bit better since they don't have to factor them!
That is what I meant. There may be limited value from forum sig links (I don't disagree with that) but there is some limited value. And it costs the forum owner nothing so why take it away?

On the other hand, I am entirely in favor of disallowing graphics in sigs - first because most of them are ugly as sin and second because they slow down page loading and is probably a significant reason for forum members abandoning certain forums.

The header links here are "no follow" Minstrel as you see below!

<div align="right"> <font size="1" face="Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><a href="http://www.linkworth.com?a=307" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Buy / Sell Text Links</a> - <a href="http://www.vbwebmaster.com/links/browselinks.php?c=2" target="_blank"> Rate Your Web Host</a> - <a href="http://www.theforumzone.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> The Forum Zone</a> - <a href="http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/ad-network/?s=492" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Join The Free Coop Ad Network</a> -</font></div>

These are the links you see at the top of the page near the Logo!

That's advertising. As long as the advertisers are happy with it, it's fine with me. I would not pay for an ad on a site that uses no-follow for my link but others may be fine with it (I don't pay for ads anyway so what do I care?).

Well like I said, we have a way to go with this issue, it is being discussed on a lot of forums right now!

I do agree that forums should be straight up with the members and open as to what their policies are on this matter and VBW will be better for it in the end, I know it will when we get this resolved once and for all.

Yes, I've seen some of them. I'm not inclined to join a hundred forums just to educate people but the majority of the ones I've seen are explicitly using the myth of "loss of PR to outgoing links" as the reason or the main reason. Many of these are webmaster / SEO forums. If the forum owner believes "PR leak" is a problem, frankly that's a forum I don't need to waste my time on.

Remember in Google guidelines where they stated that if you had more than 50 or 100 outgoing links that your page would be devalued?

Well that is where you are getting theses ideas thrown at you from, webmasters do think that the more outgoing links on a page there is that are followed, the lower their pages will rank!

They may have a point Minstrel because this comes from Google themselves!

So the no follow option is the solution to this problem, plus we still have our signature links as a reward for creating content for forum owners to benefit from financially! :)

Google does not say that and never did say that. What Google did say was that on an average web page you should limit # of links to a maximum of 100, NOT that they would penalize you for more. There are DMOZ pages with more than 100 links on them - are they penalized?

There are two issues for Google: (1) maximum page size is an issue for spidering, because at a certain point (which seems now to be greater than the original 101kb) it won't spider any further on that page; and (2) I think at a certain point, Googlebot will stop following links (possibly around that 100 link mark... who knows).

There are a lot of myths and superstitions about Google and almost all of them are misguided and unfounded.

I have seen that page, you must have a link to it Minstrel.

This is where these things come from, you know it and I know it!

This is the only place Google talks about it, in their Guidelines for Webmasters:

Google Information for Webmasters (http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/guidelines.html)

Webmaster Guidelines
Following these guidelines will help Google find, index, and rank your site. Even if you choose not to implement any of these suggestions, we strongly encourage you to pay very close attention to the "Quality Guidelines," which outline some of the illicit practices that may lead to a site being removed entirely from the Google index. Once a site has been removed, it will no longer show up in results on Google.com or on any of Google's partner sites.

Design and Content Guidelines: Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.
Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages.
Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.
Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn't recognize text contained in images.
Make sure that your TITLE and ALT tags are descriptive and accurate.
Check for broken links and correct HTML.
If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.
Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).

Where do you see anything there about a penalty?

Well if you don't follow the guidelines the devaluation is a given Minstrel :) :wave:

Thanks for finding and posting this for the forum Sir :o

if you don't follow the guidelines the devaluation is a given
No, that's not true. Many of the guidelines are simply consistent with this Google credo:

Google Information for Webmasters (http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/guidelines.html)

Make pages for users, not for search engines.

That is a valuable page that is a good starting point for web development and SEO, webmasters need to get back to basics and quit trying to game the search engines!

That is a valuable page that is a good starting point for web development and SEO, webmasters need to get back to basics and quit trying to game the search engines!
Absolutely true. I think if most of the webmasters who whine about being mistreated by Google would simply read and adhere to that page, they'd likely find that Google was a lot "kinder" to their sites.

Yes but we hear so much about scraper sites, adsense sites, affiliate sites and linking scams that will deliver the old "Black Hat Traffic" that we get drawn off into all kinds of things that can kill sites long term!

Everyone wants to get rich quick because they heard someone else did it!

Well for every Larry and Sergey there are billions of people that will never get the chance or opportunity to get that rich in this business, but we can make a living if we have the right partners :)

I totally agree. I just posted this on another forum in response to a question about paying forum posters:

My opinion: If you need to pay people to post on your forum, perhaps you should seriously thinking about dumping the forum and putting your energies elsewhere.

In the forum world, as well as other aspects of the internet, people are ay too focused on the short term and the quick buck. Look to the long term, whether it's forum building or general site promotion, and build slowly and legitmately toward those long-term goals.

Funny that you say that, now we have forum owners that have no shame that will invade other forums with crafty thought out promotions to steal members :o

Forums are nothing more than self promotional crap anymore and I am sick of the entire game!

What is really sad are the forum owners themselves that are misguided and have trouble realizing that quality content is the forum's sole asset in the real world.

You find them censoring content to protect their favorite companies and buddies on the forum circuit and letting anyone join, even self promoters that ruin their forums and just let it slide!

The paying for posts deal is a scam and so are post exchange co-op's, these things tie into the forum promotional schemes and it is very sad for us old timers to see it infecting webmaster forums!

The young kids that are running forums today do not know any better, some of them are 13-17 year olds and they are trying to moderate people in their 40's and 50's and it just does not work!

I can always tell when I am on of forum full of kids and most of the time I just tell them to stick it and move on! :D

I think the hack mentioned earlier is a better way to handle this issue.

I am considering using (i have it installed but not turned on) the hack with option 2 and not using the no follow. This also have the result the signature is removed to everyone when less then a certain word count.

http://www.vbseo.com/5618-post1.html

my 2 pence worth

The SEO result is that you will:
1. Conserve PageRank (with rel=nofollow) OR (with signature removal)
2. Maintain a higher density of keywords relevant to the thread topic
3. Prevent sigs from interrupting the flow of the discussion
What utter and complete and unmitigated crap!

1. You do not need to do anything to "conserve PageRank" - one more time: PR leak is a MYTH!

2. Keyword density is also for all intents and purposes pretty much a myth - as long as you're not keyword stuffing and have a minimum number of references to the leywords in the text.

3. How the hell do signatures disrupt "the flow of the discussion"???

There's a fool born every minute.
For those who believe any of the bull**** advanced to try to sell VBSEO (at $150 a pop) about PR leak and the need for no-follow. :rolleyes:

I love this subject, it is the most important issue in the history of forums (at least webmaster forums) ever!

I do think that the no follow issue for signatures should be looked at and discussed before any forum owner makes their policy decision!

In addition forum owners should make their policy on signatures and "no follow" visible and up front to all members!

What utter and complete and unmitigated crap!

1. You do not need to do anything to "conserve PageRank" - one more time: PR leak is a MYTH!

2. Keyword density is also for all intents and purposes pretty much a myth - as long as you're not keyword stuffing and have a minimum number of references to the leywords in the text.

3. How the hell do signatures disrupt "the flow of the discussion"???


For those who believe any of the bull**** advanced to try to sell VBSEO (at $150 a pop) about PR leak and the need for no-follow. :rolleyes:

Actually, I have seen where a signature can impact the relevancy of Adsense ads. So the keyword density issue is real in theory. However, that generally only affects real short posts, which wont do much for you in regard to rankings anyway since 99% of the time those threads contain little or no information to rank for anyway.

Signatures can disrupt the flow a little if they are not kept in check. but VBSEO isnt the answer. That is for occasions when, for example, someone who posts alot in a thread has a BIG BIG signature - like a large image and test as well. Then it can be a little distracting. But applyinga rel=nofollow wont help that issue whatsoever.

Joey Adsense keys off of a lot of things on vBulletin, I have seen the custom user titles throw off the ads shown, one guy was running a guitarists name as his user title and it was showing ads for that guitarist's records and other related websites and he was never mentioned in the threads at all other than the same custom user title being shown in the thread with each post.

Adsense was picking up the most relevant advertising relationship from the on page content it was reading and was showing any ads related to that artists music who's name was being used as that members custom user title!

So it is not just signatures in the posts that throw off Adsense!

That is for occasions when, for example, someone who posts alot in a thread has a BIG BIG signature - like a large image and test as well. Then it can be a little distracting. But applyinga rel=nofollow wont help that issue whatsoever.
No it won't. And the answer is either disable graphics in signatures completely or limit them to icon size... I find these huge honking graphics you see on some forums downright annoying. And as I said previously, they significantly impact page loads.

No it won't. And the answer is either disable graphics in signatures completely or limit them to icon size... I find these huge honking graphics you see on some forums downright annoying. And as I said previously, they significantly impact page loads.


Yes, they do. And as we all know, Google sometimes doesnt like to index pages that are too large.

I have a question on this vital issue for all the members here that I want to ask the new owner VBW......

VBW, are you going to put up the signature links again or not :confused:

I will re-institute sigs this week. Why not the members ask for it and they deserve it. :D However I will be disallowing graphics in sigs though...

Why wait :confused:

Many of us quit posting because of this issue :eek:

We don't care about images in signatures, no one in their right mind uses them anyway!

VBW, thanks for putting the signatures back up with the hack that shows one set of links per page! :D :wave:

http://www.forumpostersunion.com/showpost.php?p=305&postcount=5

We have told our members and the community to return to VBW to post and to support this forum! :)

Thanks. We like guests being able to see them so search engines can find our links. SEOChat did almost the same thing back in November, added the no follow code....and war broke out and half the active members left....and THEN they set it back...just a month late!!!!!

You are welcome.... I hope it helps send some visitors your way,,,:D

Well here we go again folks, Sitepoint forums is the latest forum to deny their members a signature to guest views robbing the creators of content value for their contributions!

http://www.forumpostersunion.com/showthread.php?t=189

We are calling for a boycott on Sitepoint by all members of the webmaster community starting today!

Well here we go again folks, Sitepoint forums is the latest forum to deny their members a signature to guest views robbing the creators of content value for their contributions!

http://www.forumpostersunion.com/showthread.php?t=189

We are calling for a boycott on Sitepoint by all members of the webmaster community starting today!

I just signup to your forum.This is a great site also about revealing crap in other site.thanks for the links.More power to your forum.:)

Thanks man, this is a major issue across the entire webmaster forum circuit, I want to say thanks to my friend Joey for hanging in there with me on this deal, if not for Joe a lot of things would not have been discovered on this issue!