Which domain?

[Tormod]

We currently have two domains. Our "old" site, which is where most of our traffic still comes, is at http://www.hypography.com - which has been online since 1999.

 

Our current http://hypography.com/forums domain was taken into use in April this year.

 

We have a major problem in that Google dislikes our site for some reason. Whereas Hypography ranks quite well, ScienceForums.com keeps dropping out of Google.

 

I would like your input on which of the two domains you would like for us to use in the future.

[EWright]

We currently have two domains. Our "old" site, which is where most of our traffic still comes, is at http://www.hypography.com - which has been online since 1999.

 

Our current http://hypography.com/forums domain was taken into use in April this year.

 

We have a major problem in that Google dislikes our site for some reason. Whereas Hypography ranks quite well, ScienceForums.com keeps dropping out of Google.

 

I would like your input on which of the two domains you would like for us to use in the future.

 

Is this problem anything we can contact the good people at Google about fixing? How does the new site fare with other search engines?

[Tormod]

Is this problem anything we can contact the good people at Google about fixing? How does the new site fare with other search engines?

 

We do really well in all engines that are not related to Google, like MSN and Yahoo. Sadly a lot of other engines (like AOL) use Google Search as their basis.

 

I have no idea why they don't like us. I have read up a lot on Search Engine Optimization lately and it really is a Dark Art. It seems we are being punished either for having a "young" domain, or for having links to others, or something like that. I really have no clue. We have not broken any rules AFAIK.

 

I really like the domain "scienceforums.com" but every time we disappear from Google it's a major pain in the a.. because we lose all our guests. Luckily we have a lot of members who keep coming back - but when we consider that Google brings us about 75% of the traffic, bad ranking is not good for us.

 

I have no idea whether "hypography.com/forums" would help us at all. It's just a suggestion. If someone here knows anything about this problem I'd be very happy to hear from them. :evil:

[Jay-qu]

About the google dilema - there is this company out here in australia called exa, they design web pages - but when they do they construct it such that it lends itself to been googled easily. If that doesnt really make sence then just take my example that my dads company had a website and when you typed in 'Victorian furniture' he would be on the 7th page but after they rebuilt the site they got it onto the first page! handy ey :evil:

[Tormod]

If you google science forums we used to be in the top 5. Now you will find hypography.com around #7 or #8, but scienceforums.com is around #251. That is because Google has put a sandbox filter (they deny that this exists) on our site which prevents it from being shown in search results.

 

We are emplying SEO techniques but nothing that is unacceptable to Google, so this simply shows that if we had been more clever at spamming newsgroups and having people link to us from all over the place, we'd be easier to find. Google has booted us from top positions in EVERY SINGLE SEARCH TERM that we used to own. It's a *huge* pain in the ***.

[rockytriton]

sorry Tormod, I voted scienceforums.com, I still don't even know what hypography is supposed to be all about!

[pgrmdave]

What is a hypography?

 

Hypography [n.]

A combination of "hyperlink" and "bibliography", i.e. a list of links to electronic resources related to any topic.

 

http://www.hypography.com/hypographies.cfm

[Tormod]

pgrmdave is right - Hypography is what it was all about. Members who joined before April this year might remember that we had the forum URL hypography.com/scienceforums rather than the scienceforums.com address. We changed the forum domain because the forums grew very large quickly and we needed to split them away from the other site because the forums are php based while the rest of the site is coldfusion based.

 

The hypography.com domain has a much richer history than the scienceforums.com domain, although it is not as intuitive. It is, however, a unique word that I thought up six years ago. Hypography.com has been online since October 13, 1999. :evil:

[IrishEyes]

I prefer using Hypography. Of course, I still call this place Hypography, even though it's technically been scienceforums. com for a while.

 

If Hypography ranks better, then maybe we should stick with that...

[Guadalupe]

I found your website by doing a google search on “science chat room”. That’s why I voted for scienceforums.com.

 

By the way, I like the new look. Great job! :eek:

 

:evil:

[goku]

i google hypography science forums, then click on science forums

[nkt]

For the sake of $30 or whatever, keep both! :)

[Tormod]

For the sake of $30 or whatever, keep both! :)

 

We can KEEP both, but we can't use both. We'd get killed by the search engines. They don't like us publishing the same stuff on two domains, even if it's one and the same site. Stupid, really. ;)

[C1ay]

For the sake of $30 or whatever, keep both! :)

Ultimately I think the answer will be to keep both with a hard redirect from scienceforums.com to Hypography. This seems the best approach to please the search engines and the members that prefer scienceforums.com.

[goku]

don't go to any trouble for me, i'm just a dumb ol" farmer :)

[Aki]

It doesn't really matter, as long as I get redirected when I go to hypography.com

[Rincewind]

I think one of the reasons for the Google problem is that Hypography is a fairly unique name, so will be found fairly reliably, whereas there are a great many science forums, and Hypography is just one of the many that Google finds.

 

I just tried Google, and got:

 

• Hypography -- 214,000 hits -- 1st hit, http://www.hypography.com/

• Scienceforums -- 167,000 hits -- 1st hit, http://www.scienceforums.net/ -- 9th hit, http://www.hypography.com/sciencearticle.cfm?id=4536 -- also, the message "Did you mean to search for: science forums "

• science forums -- 61,200,000 hits -- 1st hit, http://www.scienceforums.net/ -- 7th hit, http://www.hypography.com/

 

So, I voted for hypography.com/forums, because serchers for hypography will get there straight up (i.e. with an "I'm feeling lucky" hit), and searchers for a science forum will find this site at least in the first page of hits.