BuddyPress.org

WordPress has always allowed for multiple ways to access a specific post, even if your permalink structure is setup in a specific way.

Categories

http://www.thelifeofjohn.com/rants/

http://www.thelifeofjohn.com/category/rants/

Posts

http://www.thelifeofjohn.com/2009/03/the-web-world-has-gone-unordered-list-crazy/

http://www.thelifeofjohn.com/rants/the-web-world-has-gone-unordered-list-crazy/

More than one way to get to the same link, and both are valid, and both could lead Google down different paths to the same destination. Granted, this is on a non-MU install, but MU suffers the same fate, only with multiple blogs.

Without having /blog or /news or /something there, now you’re opening up the risk of having overlapping post/page slugs. If you write a blog entry named “members” what would you want to happen? Goto the blog post, or BuddyPress’s members page? Multiple that times 100 individual minds blogging outside of your control, and you see how that can be dangerous.

Trust me when I say that I understand what you’re saying, I do, and I can see how this could be something to consider when making the move to use MU and/or BuddyPress, but Google can recover quickly and so can your 5000 posts if they’re important and relevant.

Also, just for fun, lets goto…

http://delsolownersclub.com/blog/2009/02/09/del-sol-mugen-side-steps/

and then…

http://delsolownersclub.com/2009/02/09/del-sol-mugen-side-steps/

Looks like both take you where you need to be?

Not quite ready to mark this one green, but it looks like a correctly installed BuddyPress/MU won’t give you this problem…