Comment by Scoundreller

1 year ago

> It had fairly steady growth until 2012, before petering out throughout the 2010s and 2020s in lieu of more centralized sites like StackExchange, and by 2025, only a small community was left

This timeline tracks with my own blogging. Google slowly stopped ranking traditional forum posts and blogs as well around that time, regardless of quality, unless it was a “major”.

> But, unlike so many other fora from back in the early days, it went from 2003 to 2025 without ever changing its URLs, erasing its old posts, or going down altogether.

I can also confirm if you have a bookmark to my blog from 2008, that link will still work!

The CMS is no longer, it's all static now... which too few orgs take the short amount of time to bother with when "refreshing" their web presence :(

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Scoundreller

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Lammy  1 year ago

> Google slowly stopped ranking traditional forum posts and blogs as well around that time

IMO the true inflection point was 2014 when Google first hid (from the UI) and then fully removed (no longer accessible by magic URL) the “Blogs” and especially the “Discussions” filters. Some contemporary discussions on “Discussions”:

- https://techcrunch.com/2014/01/23/googles-search-filters-now...

- http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2014/03/bring-back-forum-se... (details the briefly-working magic URLs)

- https://www.ghacks.net/2014/01/23/search-discussions-blogs-p...

- https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-filters-gone-1799...

- https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4687960.htm

- https://www.thecoli.com/threads/i-cant-google-search-by-disc...

- https://www.neogaf.com/threads/anyone-else-annoyed-google-re...

- https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/57249/has-the-op...

- https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/how-to-do-google-discuss...

- https://browsermedia.agency/blog/alternatives-discussion-sea...

nateglims  1 year ago

I remember several traditional programming forums I frequented in the 00s getting hit hard by the Google Panda update around 2013. It ruined their SEO and they started to go into decline. Forums and blogs had a culture that isn't replicated by reddit, social media, etc. It's a shame to lose it.