Does Google hate all forums, or just Xenforo-based ones?

[matte black]

I just read an old post here about how Google doesn't want to index low-trust content, and that forums generally fall under this category. What I don't understand is why forums not based on software like XenForo are often suggested by Google when you search for related topics. For example, Reddit, Quora, Stack Overflow, The Student Room, and Indie Hackers all perform quite well despite being based on user-generated content. Does that mean Google prefers forums if they are designed/coded like a social media website?

 

[Ryuzaki]

Google doesn't just hate vBulletin or Xenforo or anything like that. They aren't preferring stuff like Reddit, Quora, and Stack Overflow because they're forums. More so because they're Q&A platforms, and even more so because Google's conclusion is that there's more moderation going on from the whole community, who can upvote or downvote quality/crappy responses. The problem is people upvote whatever shows up early and they upvote what makes them giggle or what hate's on the other team, etc.

 

[matte black]

Google doesn't just hate vBulletin or Xenforo or anything like that. They aren't preferring stuff like Reddit, Quora, and Stack Overflow because they're forums.

Interesting. I've been an active moderator of several forums for a while, and one thing I've realized is our user base grows only when we go viral on other platforms (mainly TikTok & Reddit). We can have the best content, use all the keywords and the article feature of Xenforo, but we almost never get direct traffic from Google search unless you search for "Topic + Forum Name". Some of the users mention hearing the forum from a similar named Reddit community even though the content over there is just beginners of the topic asking questions and there's barely any moderation going on. So I came to the conclusion that Google just doesn't like Xenforo based communities.

More so because they're Q&A platforms, and even more so because Google's conclusion is that there's more moderation going on from the whole community, who can upvote or downvote quality/crappy responses. The problem is people upvote whatever shows up early and they upvote what makes them giggle or what hate's on the other team, etc.

What if we create a plugin for this on Xenforo? Would Google treat us like those Q&A platform?

 

[Ryuzaki]

What if we create a plugin for this on Xenforo? Would Google treat us like those Q&A platform?

It’s actually already a native feature of Xenforo. They have a lot of new “thread types” like Q&A and Image Galleries and Polls and Articles. You can even designate forum nodes to only feature one type, etc.

 

[secretagentdad]

They use machine learning and they're practical.
Forum installations end up with links to black list sites and red flag keywords.
Throw one up and ignore it for a month you'll have thousands of pages of junk content linking to knock of nikes and fly by night pharmacies.

 

[chubes]

For what it's worth, I'm using BBpress on a subdomain and it ranks better than the main blog.