Can leaving a forum or site offline for a long time hurt SEO?

Beverly Level X³

August 28, 2012, 12:53 pm

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There are some unavoidable situations where your site/forum might be offline for awhile. For instance, if there's a dispute over your hosting, then your forum might be down for a day or more. Or, if you need to install new software, such as a blog or forum to your main site or migrate your forum to a subfolder, all these things time.

Would leaving your site/forum offline cause harm to your SEO? Considering how when Google bots come through, they will perceive that there is no site there. And, if yes, how long before your links get back into search engines?

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Tommy Matalino

It will do hurt your site's traffic. I don't know about SEO in a long run, so I'm not sure.
The most imminent effect is your traffic.

14 years ago

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Beverly

It will do hurt your site's traffic. I don't know about SEO in a long run, so I'm not sure.
The most imminent effect is your traffic.

This situation actually happened with my own forum where it was offline for about three days (on and off) while a billing clerical error was fixed. And, though i've never been sure if it hurt SEO, i'm sure it hurt traffic as some of the regular members thought the forum was closed for good. And, even after we opened again, the posting was slower for awhile.

14 years ago

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Corzhens

When the forum has no updates, it is considered stagnant or dead. I think the search engine is smart as to know the website if it has updates or none, regardless if it’s a forum, blog or any other kind of website. And from what I know with search engine algorithm, a new content gets plenty of points for the SEO capability or compliance while a non-action like a forum that is offline will get negative points which will pull down the site in the rankings.

9 years ago

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