When i decided to leave DG, i was searching for forums on-line. I already new about ATP but wanted to know what else was out there. I googled "online garden forums". The first 5 pages of forums listed did not include ATP. I have been meaning to mention this to someone here. I thought it was very strange. I tried the same search with google just now thinking i might have missed ATP the first time, but ATP still does not show up on the first 5 pages of "online garden forums". Is there something that can be done about this?

I would assume the search is probably linked to the revenue that the sites provide, and being this site is not totally revenue driven that might explain the situation.

Many sites are heavily (or entirely) forum based but ATP really is more centered on the plants database. So I don't think it's seen as a "forum" website, per se.

The more people link to your website, the higher you will be in the google search. We're always getting more sites linking to us, thankfully, and each one of those helps us get higher in our google ranking.

Okay, thanks, but the number of hits a site gets in a day doesn't help? As in the more members, the more hits, the higher the ranking?

I don't think that affects Google's rankings. It's more about popularity between other sites and yours which is judged almost entirely by how many other sites link to you.

That's good to know...do you think i should shut down the thread?

I don't see why you should.

Nor do I. Seems like this thread might prompt people to encourage other sites to link to us.

Can we even close a thread?

Seedfork said:Can we even close a thread?

Not that I know of, either -- except maybe in "Ask a Question"

o well, that takes care of my question. I did see somewhere "do you want to close or finish this thread?"...or something similar that made me think it is an option. Most likely it was on an ID forum. I just didn't see the potential for much conversation to be generated, but once again i may have underestimated the ATPers, so we'll see where this takes us...