WP-Discourse: Forum topics ranking higher in Google than the original Blog posts

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The discussion, WP-Discourse: Forum topics ranking higher in Google than the original Blog posts, revolves around the issue of Discourse forum topics ranking higher in Google search results than the original WordPress blog posts they were imported from. haydenjames initially reported this issue, despite having the Set the canonical URL for embedded topics to the embedded content's URL setting enabled.

Jagster responded by pointing out that Google’s ranking decisions are not solely based on canonical URLs, but rather on various factors such as user engagement, website performance, and content quality. haydenjames agreed and identified potential reasons for this issue, including:

  • Higher User Engagement on the Forum due to comments and content expansion
  • Domain Authority and Freshness issues, as the blog’s domain was changed less than a year ago
  • Internal or External Linking advantages on the forum
  • Google’s own Indexing Behavior and algorithms
  • Click-Through Rate (CTR) differences between forum and blog posts

haydenjames plans to make minor improvements on the blog’s side, but acknowledges that some factors are beyond their control and may resolve themselves over time. This thread aims to help others who may be experiencing similar issues.

1

I have Set the canonical URL for embedded topics to the embedded content's URL. enabled. But still the Discourse forum topic always ranks higher than the WP Blog post which it imported from.

Anyone else seen this issue or any quick things I can check to troubleshoot this?

2

It’s Google’s choice. Propably a topic is easier for users, or googlebot sees it that way. Or that forum link gets more clicks. Or your WordPress is offering too much all kind of popups or another junk, or is way slower.

So actually you should solve out possible issues on WordPress end. Because basically you are askin now how can I make a topic look worse in eyes of googlebot than WordPress :joy:

Canonical url doesn’t mean that Google ranks original one better. That happens quite often though, but it is not automatic. It basically tells Google that those aren’t dublicates but connected copies, like mirrored ones, and for search results those two are same. And depending what is searched, who is seaching and perhaps which one offers better meta, Google chooses one of those two.

For me that started happen when I dumped oneboxes and started show full copy.

3

Thanks for confirming that I can eliminate that.

I did research before opening this thread but wanted to be sure that there wasn’t something Discourse specific that I was missing/overlooking.

But yes, ruling that out, the reasons behind Google’s choices are one or more of these:

  • Higher User Engagement on the Forum: applies due to comments, which also add content expansion.
  • Domain Authority and Freshness: applies because the blog’s domain was changed < 1 year ago when this started happening. Before that, the old 12 yr old domain had a much higher DA rating, so blog was always preferred by Google.
  • Internal or External Linking: applies because of things like automation of the similar topics on pages helps with that on forums.
  • Just Google’s own Indexing Behavior: due to algorithms and how it selects preferred pages. We can only influence that to a certain extent.
  • Click-Through Rate (CTR): I tend to click on search results that are from forums, Reddit, etc. more than news articles or blog posts. So could be related also due to forum CTR possible being higher for those pages.

Yes, i will make some minor improvements on the blog’s side. But the rest will just have to solve itself over time. Hopefully, this thread will be helpful to others who notice similar.