Why Doesn't Google Search Include this Forum?

Maybe I’m doing something wrong, but I never see any posts in any of the KM forums included in Google Search results.

Can you please make the forum available to Google?

Thanks.

Hey Michael,

Try this:

JMichaelTX site:http://forum.keyboardmaestro.com

-Chris

For a very slight abbreviation, you also could use:

site:forum.keyboardmaestro.com

(or even

site:keyboardmaestro.com

(though that wouldn’t be limited to the forum)

inurl:keyboardmaestro

might be the most general, though it would pick up any path on any site which included a segment consisting of that full string

DuckDuckGo and Google both show me results on the forum if I search for something, for example:

Keyboard Maestro window positioning issues

comes up with the corresponding topic on the forum as the first match.

Note that Google at least gives different results to different people for the same search, adding in information the Googleplex knows about you and your interests into tailoring the search results to match your perceived desires, so it is always hard to know why any given user sees whatever it is they see when searching google.

That particular search also worked for me in Google. But it is the FIRST of the many, many Google searches that I have done that start with “Keyboard Maestro” that have showed KM forum posts in the results.

For example, I just searched “Keyboard Maestro firefox” and it did NOT show any forum results.
However, when use “site:http://forum.keyboardmaestro.com firefox” it finds quite a few, including the thread I recently started.

Contrast this with “evernote [keyword]” and Google always shows many, many results from the Evernote forum.

So, with all due respect Peter, I humbly submit that the KM forums are not properly setup/optimized for Google search. I don’t know how to do this, but I have seen other articles that talk about SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Using the “site:” prefix does search the KM forums, but it means always have to do two searches: one with, and one without.

Thanks for looking into this.

Thanks Chris. That works very well.

I think the answer may lie in the way google tweaks the result on your search preferences and whether you have visited Keyboard Maestro before, hence Peter not having a problem. As an aside, I was specifically looking for “tagine” recipes and found very good ones when I used https://www.google.com.au/ the Australian, which were completely different to www.google.com and www.google.co.uk. When I am searching for something specific in an overseas location, then you can force google to search with emphasis on that location.

1 Like

Thanks for the idea jonathonl, but I have to disagree. :smile:
For one thing, I am a very frequent visitor to the KM main site and the KM forums. So, if anything, that should be giving Google a hint of where to look.

I use Google search a great deal, many times a day, and I am usually successful in quickly finding what I need. As I stated above, it is a big clue that when I do a search and use the “site:” qualifier it finds many forum posts, but does not without the qualifier.

How about http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/12823/why-is-google-not-indexing-my-forum ??

You may well be right about SEO and what have you.

I searched for “Keyboard Maestro firefox” in DDG, and it found How to Get URL of FireFox Current Document? as the third possibility, but in Google, it did not find anything.

It may be due to the relative youth of the forum - its only been around for a short while (less than a year). Google (last I hear anyway) places value of links to the forum from other places and there probably is not a lot of them at this point.

Maybe I should add some google advertising to the site, I’m sure that would improve the rankings!

It may also be that there have been a lot of different people writing about Keyboard Maestro over the years, and so there is information on a lot of different sites for Google to choose form.

I agree it would be nice if the forum showed up closer to the top, but I don’t currently have any plans to try to SEO for Google - Google usually figures out the good stuff in its own way eventually.

Peter, I hope you will reconsider. I was also hoping that it wasn’t something hard to do, although I don’t really know. Maybe send an enquiry to Google asking them?

Finally, I think it would be a good marketing ploy. If potential buyers can easily find/see specific examples of KM, they might be more inclined to try/buy it. :wink:

1 Like

I know this is an old thread but for what it is worth to someone who may stumble upon this at a later date like I just did here are a few macros I use to search the current site I am in.

Search Current Site - Examples - Skillet Macros.kmmacros (73.4 KB)

I was actually searching without success who makes this forum software, I found it once before but can't seem to find it. I love the way this forum software works by far more than any other forum competitor. They seem to do a pretty good job at being humble and not advertising their work unlike the competition.

It’s made by http://www.discourse.org.
Their forum is at https://meta.discourse.org.

1 Like

Great, thank you.