Customized WordPress Mu or minisites?

15 years ago

I would recommend against using WPMU. Google has been deindexed newer WPMU sites quite frequently over the past 3-4 months, probably because they suddenly became popular with blackhatters.

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Jon Alexander

15 years ago

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

I would recommend against using WPMU. Google has been deindexed newer WPMU sites quite frequently over the past 3-4 months, probably because they suddenly became popular with blackhatters.

I'd like to see the source for that statement. My free wordpress mu blogs are going from strength to strength.

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bgmacaw 15 years ago

Originally Posted by Jon Alexander

I'd like to see the source for that statement. My free wordpress mu blogs are going from strength to strength.

There has been mention of it on some black and gray hat forums that I won't link to from here but you can probably find some public threads on these forums if you Google for them.

I also will add my personal experience with them. I have several WPMU blogs on domains operated by friends. About 70% of these domains have been deindexed by Google even though the content was legit. Some have been reindexed while others have not. Exactly why some were untouched, some reindexed and some not is unclear. If your WPMU domains have survived, you've done something right somehow.
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- selig 15 years ago
  
  I am running several WPMU-powered sites on differnet domains and even different servers (none of them associated with Internet marketing however, only "real" blog sites for multiple users).
  Frankly, I have not noticed any of the blogs (or domains) having been deindexed by Google. However, I'd assume that if one of the blogs gets blacklisted with Google, this might possibly affect other sites within the same installation as well?
  
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  bgmacaw 15 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by selig
  
  However, I'd assume that if one of the blogs gets blacklisted with Google, this might possibly affect other sites within the same installation as well?
  
  Yes. Google essentially considers them all on the same domain and will penalize across the whole domain. This is different from how they treat their own Blogger blogs and a few other popular blogging sites like WordPress.com, Typepad and Today.com, where they'll treat the subdomains as separate entities.
  
  Like I said, I'm not sure what triggers the deindexing. I suspect that like with many things Google it's a combination of different flags like number of subdomains, keywords, template footprints and so forth.
  
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SoEasyMoney

15 years ago

Ok, I've been toying with WordPress and actually come to love it. But, I've never heard of WordPress MU? Anyone care to elaborate?

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mgcstrat 15 years ago

Originally Posted by SoEasyMoney

Ok, I've been toying with WordPress and actually come to love it. But, I've never heard of WordPress MU? Anyone care to elaborate?

Here is the low down from WordPress:

Ever dream of running hundreds of thousands of blogs with a single install of WordPress?

WordPress MU, or multi-user, is designed to do exactly that. It is most famously used for wordpress.com where it serves tens of millions of hits on hundreds of thousands of blogs each day.
Who is WordPress MU ideal for?

* Newspapers and magazines
* Universities
* Blog networks
* Niche-specific blog hosts
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selig

15 years ago

Thanks for the repsone ;-)
But then, this should probably not really be a WPMU-issue, but rather a question of spammy content etc? -- Would it be wrong to anticipate similar results when using, say static minisites with a similar subdomain-strategy and identical content as in WPMU?

My understanding would be that Google shouldn't really handle those minisites too different, just because of the chosen technology?

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bgmacaw 15 years ago

Originally Posted by selig

My understanding would be that Google shouldn't really handle those minisites too different, just because of the chosen technology?

Unfortunately, Google does look at the underlying content management system and will penalize on that basis. For example, BANS (Build A Niche Store) sites are almost always deindexed and obvious YACG (Yet Another Content Generator) sites and some older MFA site generators will draw an automatic deindex. I think that they would like to do the same with WPMU but their latest attempt took down some good with the bad.

In general, sites that appear to be plain old HTML and don't follow a standard template that's in Google's spam/MFA site database are less suspect to the algorithm.
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Jon Alexander

15 years ago

Originally Posted by selig

Thanks for the repsone ;-)
But then, this should probably not really be a WPMU-issue, but rather a question of spammy content etc? -- Would it be wrong to anticipate similar results when using, say static minisites with a similar subdomain-strategy and identical content as in WPMU?

My understanding would be that Google shouldn't really handle those minisites too different, just because of the chosen technology?

agree. It's probably nothing whatsoever to do with the wordpress tech, but rather the content. So there's your answer. What he's basically saying is that 'spammy sites get delisted'. No sh*t, Sherlock.

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bgmacaw

15 years ago

Originally Posted by Jon Alexander

agree. It's probably nothing whatsoever to do with the wordpress tech, but rather the content. So there's your answer. What he's basically saying is that 'spammy sites get delisted'. No sh*t, Sherlock.

No that's not what I'm saying 'Sherlock'.

I'm saying that Google's algorithm was deindexing legit WPMU sites. Sites with legit content that didn't permit just anyone to register and throw up a splog. For example, WPMU sites for students on .edu domains got hit. They were casting a very wide net against WPMU sites and deindexing legit sites along with spammy ones.

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slimshady22248202

15 years ago

Hey, Selig, Every try using Weebly.com. This is pretty cool, you can set up and a blog also. Pages or Posts whatever you prefer. Very easy to set up. You can either use a subdomain or get a domain yourself. I personally recommend going with Hostgator.com, you can get unlimited add on domains with this hosting company.

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selig

15 years ago

Thanks again for all replies. Not questioning anybody, just trying to understand ;-)
@bgmacaw: I can see why Google would penalize e.g. BANS, but I don't really get a grip of the WPMU-issue: AFAIK, there is no technical difference between the code-output of WPMU and multiple WP-installs on different subdomains (unless you use special WPMU-template tags)?

In that case, Google wouldn't really have a chance to see wether it is looking at a WP-install or WPMU? -- And as an avid blogger, I've never heard about Google penalizing WP-based sites per se, quite in the opposite?

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kevinw1

15 years ago

How are they identifying WPMU sites in order to deindex them?

Looking at the code for one of my WPMU blogs, it doesn't seem to identify it as MU (just says generator=Wordpress 2.7 in the meta tags) but there could be a slight difference in the folder names used for various scripts and stylesheets.

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selig 15 years ago

@kevinw1 There shouldn't (depending on the chosen themes, though). However, there are some additional folders in the installation -- but those are residing within folders that are not to be indexed by search-engines.

Perhaps bgmacaw could help us to understand more?
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sjacobs77

15 years ago

How are WPMU blogs different than regular WP blogs? Do you mean the hosted blogs? Sorry for the newbie question.

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selig

15 years ago

@sjacobs77
I'm not an Internet marketing pro, so I cannot answer that question from that perspective, however I have worked with WP and WPMU for years and created countless WP-installations (as well as numerous plugins and themes), most on behalf of customers.
There are numerous technicall differences between WPMU blogs and single-install WP blogs (such as different folders for storing the blogs' information, slightly different database schemes etc), but as I (and others) have said before in this thread, those differences are internal and should not be visible to the outside (ie they should not affect the produced code), when you look at a single blog, regardless of whether it is WP or WPMU.

Just for the sake of it, I just diffed the html-output of an empty WPMU-blog with the one of an empty WP-blog with the same theme and could not find any differences. Of course, ProductCreator has a valid point: in an unchanged state, the main index ("main blog") on WPMU is a blog referencing to all blogs within the WPMU-installation, which could be used to determine that the blog-engine actually is WPMU.

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Customized WordPress Mu or minisites?

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