Is anyone else having problems getting to dumpshock through google?

If I type "dumpshock forums" or even "forums.dumpshock" into google, it doesnt even show up in the first two pages. A link to the wikipedia entry for dumpshock does, as does the SR4 forums, and www.dumpshock.com, but not the forums themselves. Anyone else having this issue?

It's nothing on your side, the admins have configured the forums.dumpshock.com domain to not show up on search engines:
http://forums.dumpshock.com/robots.txt

Why would they do this? Won't this just stifle growth and prevent new members from finding the site?

Good question...a bit less traffic?

No search engines - less traffic - fewer bots - less server strain - reduced rate of growth.

Missing anything?

www.dumpshock.com links right here; no good?

• When googling for "shadowrun forums", this is what I get. Doesn't really look inviting, right?
• General searches like "technomancer rigging" won't show results from here at all
• Searching the forums via "site:dumpshock.com" (google does some useful stuff like alternate spellings) doesn't work either

In short: Not really

It's true that the native search does suck, like all forums.

Hmm, I must be spoiled. I participate in several forums that do a pretty decent job of providing easily searchable forums. That said this particular topic seems kind of like a missed opportunity at first glance to me-but then I know the moderation isn't really a unified voice, as it were. I'm sure that this, combined with what would seem like a part time moderation team equates to a less aggressive public presence at times.

We are grognards.
We don't like change.
We don't like bots.

Doh! I was working on the robots and when I was dealing with a performance issue and forgot to come back to it...

Google.com showed up in the user list tonight, so I presume their spiders have found us.

Well, that might of course also be a reason...

say what?

Google.com has been showing up over the last day or so in the Active Users list at the bottom of the front page.

… They have a user account?

Nope. If you mouse over, there's no link, but they announce themselves.

Probably the forum software recognizes the Google spider (user agent and everything) and just puts the entry in the user list.

I for one welcome our new arachnoid overlords, hopefully they will index the whole forum...

Yah, being able to use site:dumpshock.com will be soo worth it . .

Cos new members will obviously now to search for "dumpshock forums" and dotn just simple serach "shadowrun forums" that has dumpshock as a third result.

Comes up as 2nd for me so we just have to take down the catalyst forums......

If it stops my players finding it then that's all good by me

It's a bit of a pain having to watch what I say tbh, as I would prefer to be able to ask for specific help here that would inevitably include spoilers. Not sure what to do about it.

Time for a Shadowrun...