Does Google Hate Forum Sites? Millions of Pages Disappear From Index

Millions of Pages Disappear From Index (or Do They?)

We at TastyPlacement have noticed that millions of pages of popular forums sites have disappeared from Google’s index in the past few months. Testing the index, a Google search for the custom string “site:forums.digitalpoint.com,” which would normally return tens of millions of pages, returns only 256,000 results. Similarly, the tremendously popular forum site, fanforum.com, shows only 58,000 indexed pages in Google. Typically the “site:” search query generates a reliable count of the number of pages indexed by Google for a particular domain.

Testing in other niches shows that the trend is broad: ClubLexus.com shows only 57,000 indexed pages–a narrow fraction of its total page count. If you prowl around, you’ll see the same thing: notebookforums.com, sitepoint.com, every forum site I checked gave the same result.

Here’s the kicker: all of the pages within these forums sites appear to be searchable–the pages are indexed and searchable but not reported as indexed,

Hmmm…not sure how to parse this but it could reflect Google making a formal, algorithmic devaluation in the way it treats forums pages. This change might mean that links on those forum pages would be significantly devalued.