Latest Announcemnent
New thread
Status
Not open for further replies.
M

Mr Happy

Active Member
4,093
2009
2,572
0
I'd like to see #hashtags introduced into the site. They are on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Google Plus, etc. and now Facebook is looking to add them.

They are mainstream and not going away. Tags are not a new thing. You can add tags in Wordpress and other forum scripts but adding tags after you created a post never caught on. It's not user friendly which is why hashtags are more popular.

They are important as they allow both users and search engines to find related content. Sure WJ has forums that group similar topics but often a topic overlaps forums. If you have a Wordpress SEO problem it can go in the #SEO forum and the #Wordpress forum. Potentially it may even be blackhat. Hashtags solve this issue.

WJ needs to start looking into this and very quickly so it's added around the same time as Facebook, preferable before and with the new theme. If it's too long after like the mobile theme issue it's another place WJ will be left behind current trends looking foolish and outdated.
 
16 comments
Is there any evidence that #hashtags will have an impact on SEO in any way at all, as in has google itself said that #hashtags will have an effect on a site's SEO?
 
Mdrop said:
http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=266730 right?
Click to expand...

A bit like it but more advanced.

The way I see it working is if you create a new thread or reply the plugin would scan the content and automatically add the bbcode hashtag if found a space followed by a # followed by numbers or letters. It's not that complicated a plugin. Simple regex for any coder. It wouldn't add them automatically although retain the bbcode if not removed if a topic or post was edited allowing people to remove them in certain cases if needed. All the hashtags would be links when rendered. That's the way I see it working.


iHate said:
Is there any evidence that #hashtags will have an impact on SEO in any way at all, as in has google itself said that #hashtags will have an effect on a site's SEO?
Click to expand...
Google is even further ahead than manually added hashtags and last week started automatically adding hashtags to posts on Google Plus following it's announcement at the Google I/O Conference. What Google does is scan the content and add what it considers a relevant hashtag to improve the search and seo of the site. It's expected this will be rolled out to other Google services like Youtube first before it has a wider release.
 
Last edited:
Would be good if hashtags were added automatically within each post for cetrain keywords such as #design and #seo. Maybe leading to the tags page for each term.

Would it improve SEO?
Not much IMO, since there isn't a fast flow of content like there is on social media sites. Topics are already grouped under forums, Google wouldn't recognise it as a relevant page, due to the same content being available elsewhere.
 
True WJ doesn't have as fast a flow of content but that doesn't mean it won't work. Remember the content on WJ is usually more relevant months if not years later. eg how to make a logo transparent topic is still relevant months later unlike say a social media post which is more about the latest news or what someone did yesterday or will do this weekend. It's relevant for a shorter period of time. In general WJ posts are relevant longer so the flow doesn't need to be as fast.

On WJ it will basically be a more advanced version of the similar threads you see at the bottom of this page for grouping related content but on a larger and more accurate scale.
 
Well, the whole point of hashtags on Twitter was to group activity trends and trending topics within a certain timeframe, the others jumped on the same boat. People don't understand that by hashtagging their posts, they're doing market research for huge companies to extort more money from them (but thats besides the point). Basically, they use hashtags to analyse data. What's the point of adding them on a forum which can't manage to get more than a handful of hashtags per day? There is no data to analyse, just more links which lead to useless pages with no original content on them.

We already have tagging options, they're useless since nobody uses them. Hashtagging might make it easier to tag, but whats the point really?
 
Last edited:
Almost everything you do on the internet can be analysed. Every time you search on Google it's analysed but that doesn't mean WJ has to analysis all of it's searches to discover trends and make money. WJ has search because it's useful to it's members. The same is true for hashtags. WJ doesn't have to add it to mine user data and sell adverts to corporate brands. It can add it to help members find related content and make it easier for search engines to crawl related content.

Look at it from a member point of view not a huge corporate point of view. WJ doesn't need to know how many Justin Bieber posts are made per minute nor does it care.
 
As you rightly said, there's a search function for finding content. Members can use that.

Plus, how much of this shit would we see?
#hashtagsftw #bestwebsite #scam #makemoney #nopayment #scammer #cheaphosting #bestimagehost #scammm

Remember, there's a new page created for every hashtag (even the bullshit ones) which will be crawled.
Hundreds of useless pages, not useful for members or Google or anyone.
 
SJshah said:
As you rightly said, there's a search function for finding content. Members can use that.

Plus, how much of this shit would we see?
#hashtagsftw #bestwebsite #scam #makemoney #nopayment #scammer #cheaphosting #bestimagehost #scammm

Remember, there's a new page created for every hashtag (even the bullshit ones) which will be crawled.
Hundreds of useless pages, not useful for members or Google or anyone.
Click to expand...

Search has captcha for visitors so its very unfriendly not to mention you have to physically type your query instead of just clicking on a link. Search engines can't use search. With hashtags you can only show results if more than eg 3 or 5 exist so one off spam like ones wouldn't return results. It's also easy to add filters, block forums, control spam, length and number of hashtags per thread or reply. All this is easily done and I've done similar in the past when I built link checkers. That parts not a problem.
 
Mr Happy said:
Search has captcha for visitors so its very unfriendly not to mention you have to physically type your query instead of just clicking on a link. Search engines can't use search.
Click to expand...
Visitors are required to use captcha for two reasons: stop abuse and influence them to signup. Captcha is a good thing.

Search engines don't need to use the search function, hence why they are search engines. They crawl pages for new links, and would probably get them via the sitemap/rss/atom feed anyway.

Mr Happy said:
With hashtags you can only show results if more than eg 3 or 5 exist so one off spam like ones wouldn't return results. It's also easy to add filters, block forums, control spam, length and number of hashtags per thread or reply. All this is easily done and I've done similar in the past when I built link checkers. That parts not a problem.
Click to expand...
It can be done, no doubt about that. In my opinion its a useless feature and won't be used by anyone to find anything, wont work well. It would be useless to Google since they already have WJ pages indexed - they don't need a hashtag page in-between the search query and the content - it's exactly the type of pages they don't want in their result pages.

We will have to agree to disagree on this one...
 
#Hash Tag System

Hello everyone, Ive been here for a very long time, Ive seen a lot of changes over the years some good, some bad, some weird & yuh.

Anyways, I have not been around lately so im not sure if this has been suggested or not.


But i would so love to see a #hash tag system implemented. It is totally possible and we have a lot of great coders here on the forums,

Exel actually designed a system like this a while back and it worked flawlessly. On his site


I just think it would be so cool to get a private PM, or even a pop up when your on WJ or when you refresh because some one tagged you like.


Example:

Hes anyone seen #Dlow, were has he been?
Where has #baraka ran off to ?


I think this would help boost forum activity quite a bit also, As then others would like to see why they are being tagged for one, And would follow in with the discussion possibly there for boosting post counts, threads, and over all activity.

Just a thought,

Regards, DLow
 
Threads merged, Dlow.
Continue with the topic :)





____________
for WJ Quiz Night
Njg3NDc0NzAyNTMzNDEyZjJmNjI2OTc0MmU2Yzc5MmYzMTM3Njg3MzQ4NjQ0OQ==
 
Last edited:
cvrle77 said:
Do you guys know any forum that have hashtags applied, so I can take a look and see how it looks there?
Click to expand...



Exel had hash tags implemented on generalbb.com before the server was suspended.

Shoot him a PM,

The way his system worked was a members name would be mentioned, And then you would have a pop up on the right hand side of the screen, It was pretty cool tbh
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top