If you Googled the name of our forum it was in a list of chat forums, now it's not there, so nobody will be able to find us ! 😎
Well lets chat club is still showing for me https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=lets+chat+club&hl=en but it's of little use as anybody searching for that already knows the name.
Undortunately I suspect few pensioners search for a place like this using anything other than pensioners forum as their search term. That leads to one place only as it has been operating for well over a decade and all the other hits in the follow on pages seem to be council run forums of one sort or another. The only way a forum such as this is likely to grow until the google search changes (which is probably unlikely as the other place is still operating) is by personal referrals and there haven't been any. Most people seem to be happier on Facebook and talking mostly to family.
Oh dear.. We are doomed.. At least we tried.. Well done klondike.. :clap:
Will the last person standing please turn off the lights...
Where's the switch? in case
Quote from: Alex on August 05, 2022, 09:44:00 PMIf you Googled the name of our forum it was in a list of chat forums, now it's not there, so nobody will be able to find us ! 😎
Also when I tried,
(I won't use Google out of principal) I found all that was reflected was 'Dating Clubs'. Perhaps renaming as 'Pensioners' Chat Forum might help, or contacting Age UK etc al to distribute the name on their website might help?
The search engine most people use is Google. Next is probably Bing by people who just use a windows laptop and don't change the defaults. The reason I wanted to install the 2.1 software is because a mod only available to the newer release produces a site map and allows tinkering of tags within the pages produced to contain such descriptors.
https://custom.simplemachines.org/index.php?mod=2659
Where a search on google finds us the site is shown looking like this...
(https://i.postimg.cc/QdP70PMn/search-engine.jpg) (https://postimages.org/)
We do come top with some search terms but unfortunately as few use those terms it doesn't help. Plus on this search where we come top that is followed by a swathe of results from the mothership which, as I said earlier, is well established and is unlikley to be displaced from the top spot while it continues to operate so that site is the one that new posters will find. This is doubtless why GoF advised we give up on this site way back.
Example
(https://i.postimg.cc/7YY8tmsg/friendly-pensioners.jpg) (https://postimages.org/)
It's interesting to see from the last post in that image that PF had problems in 2011 as well as those in 2021 but kept on going.
Newbies don't seem to stay on PF.. It is kept alive by a couple of regular posters..
It's all very sad because so many people out there need communication with others.. If only they just gave it a go..
Facebook is fine but we need people outside of our families to chat with...
I gave 4 people the link to PF a couple of years back. 2 tried but gave up as they felt they were intruding and were either ignored or talked down to by certain members. The other 2 read for a few days but said they didn't think it was for them.
I am admin on a beer and pubs forum, and we can go a few days without a single post. However, baring in mind it isn't a general discussion forum, I guess this is to be expected. I also run another forum (I won't name it as I don't wish to be seen to poach members here) and isn't as busy as this one! Nevertheless, it is busy enough to remain of interest to our members. Another forum on which I post is dedicated to a children's author, but has many 'off-topic' threads is very active. So, don't turn the lights off yet!
I'll let this site run as long as people want it to run. What I don't expect to see though without some sort of a miracle is good search engine rankings driving lots more people here.
I had hoped we would be found by some but it seems to me now that that is not likely. I like forums but to a large extent they are surpassed these days by Facebook which I don't like.
I'm a little disappointed that Google continues to rank what is pretty much a shell of a forum so highly in its results to the exclusion of other independent sites but I don't have the expertise to overcome or do anything much about that.
I've been running my own forum since 2005. In the good old days we had about 100 regular posters and trips out with 20+ on a 3 monthly basis. Now we're down to about a dozen regular posters and very little interest in actually meeting up.
The blame lies squarly in one place as far as I can see. Facebook.
Yep. :upvote:
Is there no way we can change the name ? so that Pensioner comes first as Cass said 'Pensioner Chat' or 'Pensioners Place' even 'Pensioner's Naughty Step' :grin: would that take us above, or level with the mother ship ?
You all had the choice of domain name and voted on it. Changing it now would not only make no difference to the ranking but would temporarily lose all the indexing and ranking that has already been done. Various searches may well find pages from the forum but as most of the threads are word games they are unlikely to match many queries as the post content is small.
Google already lists the site as a pensioners forum as I showed in an earlier post.
I'm not sure if you'll be able to see the google search console pages here.
https://search.google.com/search-console/insights/u/0?resource_id=sc-domain:letschat.club&ga4_property_id=297258779&ga4_stream_id=3108855587
I've checked and you can't as the site ownership is linked to my gmail account and providing the property identification isn't enough.
Quote from: klondike on August 06, 2022, 09:19:25 PMYou all had the choice of domain name and voted on it.
I never liked the name, perhaps we should have put more thought into it ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkKxmnrRVHo
Domain names have no impact on ranking anyway. The only thing that really matters is content both for being found and somebody deciding to register if a site is found.
So it's not like a phone directory then ? if they still exist :cool:
There is a whole industry devoted to getting sites found from searches. Companies spend a fortune paying people to tweak their site content to achieve it. It obviously doesn't work too well though or there wouldn't be all those adverts out there on websites, in the papers, on radio and TV etc.
Nothing stopping us running google adverts of course but setting a realistic payment criteria and price might be tricky plus would you want to pay for the pleasure of Sciatico and The Deep being members?