I think it’s doubtful although I am a bit of a dunce when it comes to SEO. We do use the All in One SEO Pack and The Google Sitemap plugins here (and SP supports both if active) so perhaps that all adds mileage.

I will leave it up to more knowledgeable people than I to answer the actual question but it did make me chuckle as most of the time we get people posting saying they have had their forum up for two days and it hasn’t appeared on Google yet 🙂

I just got a google alert that this post was indexed.  Wow that was fast!  Happened in under a day (likely indexed faster as the alerts are sent just once every 24 hours).  I’m not sure how someone would test this against other forum packages, but I definitely think there is a pure SEO advantage here…a hidden gem of a feature!

That’s good eh? If there is magic I don’t know what it is! 🙂

I would venture to guess it’s because Google gives an extra boost to WordPress based sites (that’s pretty well known in SEO circles).  Simple Press being a wordpress plugin and creating content within that framework means it’s sort of thrown in the same bucket (cause it’s part of WordPress).  Google sees it as all one juicy content-rich WordPress site.

If you use an external forum software, then you basically have a whole separate “site” sitting in a subfolder (and Google sees it as being a separate thing even though it’s the same website.)  So it doesn’t get the same rankings or SEO juice. 

Here’s some research on the matter for those who are interested:

http://www.dialme.com/blog/does-google-favor-wordpress-websites/

http://www.goyingle.com/want-to-rank-your-site-on-google-wordpress-is-the-answer/blog/

http://www.tastyplacement.com/is-wordpress-good-for-seo

http://bravewhale.com/services/seo-sem/

http://www.prunderground.com/google-loves-wordpress-seo-dream-beginners/009070/

This is a huge advantage over any other forum software or separate script.  

is  you use google xml sitemap plugin, you can get it instantly added and google notified…