Search Engine Issue

[DJ Frankie]

Hi Folks

I have noticed that if I type in my disco name say in Google there seems to be loads of links to certain threads from this site and other DJ forums I’m signed up with.
Obviously there are certain threads that I don’t particularly want clients to see and I notice it doesn’t affect everyone on here. Is there a way around this?

Frankie

[Solitaire Events Ltd]

Hi Folks

I have noticed that if I type in my disco name say in Google there seems to be loads of links to certain threads from this site and other DJ forums I’m signed up with.
Obviously there are certain threads that I don’t particularly want clients to see and I notice it doesn’t affect everyone on here. Is there a way around this?

Frankie

Yeah, don't post things you don't want people to see! ;)

[Shaun]

I'm guessing it's because you're using your full company name as your forum username. I don't think there's any way around this. Except maybe a change of username.

[Solitaire Events Ltd]

Or you could change your user name to something else.

[Shaun]

There's a lesson in this thread though. The MDD forums are viewable to the public (except the MDD Supporters area). It's always mindful not to not post anything you wouldn't want a potential customer to read. :approve:

[DJ Frankie]

It didnt mean that I had threads that I didnt want the public to see as I have nothing to hide but what I dont want them to see is that I have the top score in Chopper Challenge...

How do I change my user name??

[Shaun]

It didnt mean that I had threads that I didnt want the public to see as I have nothing to hide but what I dont want them to see is that I have the top score in Chopper Challenge...

How do I change my user name??


:lol:

PM me the changes you require to your username and I'll sort it out for you.

[DJ Frankie]

Top man, i'll do it right away.

[DJ Frankie]

Yahooooooo Cheers Shaun. How easy was that. Right now where's that arcade section.

[Marc J]

The problem you're experiencing is why I don't register in forums under my company name, or mention it in posts. Although it's pretty easy to work out from my avatar - but that's an image so isn't read by search engines.

Why? I don't want my corporate clients Googling my company name to see me offering advice for free when I charge them for the same. Even when my company name is included on a site credit, I mask it from search engines using javascript.

And no, this isn't (before anyone suggests it) so the taxman can't Google my company name and see who I've worked for! I take client confidentiality very seriously and only ever show previous clients to a potential one if they have given permission. I also like to make sure I'm not competing with my own (clients) sites for SERPS placing if someone does happen to Google for me.

Oops...that turned into a bit of a rambling! Anyway, Frankie, even once your username is changed it will likely take some months for Google to fully reindex MDD (i.e. the result won't be instant).

Kinda related, if there are pages on your own website which you don't want indexed by search engines, include a robots.txt file in the root of your site. This is a special file while tells search engine spiders where they can go and where they cant. I have a "standard" robots.txt file which I've attached to this post, which bans certain known "bad spiders" from crawling your site. These are generally little known search engines which are nothing more than a waste of your bandwidth, site archivers (e.g. wayback machine), site rippers / copiers, google images etc.

You might also want to exclude specific pages on your site from search engines, for example many of my clients opt to exclude their website's legal terms page (the one that says "browse at your own risk, we're not responsible for this that and the other etc.") as this page typically mentions the company name again and again, and scores higher than the main index page for that term in SERPS, and any long page of legal speak is the last page you want visitors to land on from a search.

[DJ Frankie]

Thanks Marc, I'll look into that.