I noticed last week (I don't know if I've just been missing it), that Google is reporting the number of posts, authors, and latest post for Forum SERPs.
I see that Michael Gray recently reported on it as well.
The interesting thing is that not all forums generate this report. For instance, search for lakers forum. The result for www.clublakers.com/forum/ is built with phpbb3, and not SEO'd at all. I don't see any reason for Google not to be able to apply this new forum intelligence to the listing.
Questions:
1) What determines if the forum is worthy of these new stats?
2) What forum software can be read by Google to display these stats?
3) Is it better NOT to rewrite URL structure on forums, and allow Google's ability to read forum software to work for you?
