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Thank you Eli.

Thanks for your help with this. In the end we decided to go down the nofollow route after consulting the developer with your suggestions. Stu

Hi there, has your question been answered or not? Please let us know, thanks! ~ Christy

Also want to comment on 800 number vs local number. Generally for a local small business, a local phone number is preferred. And yes, we use it in the meta description, because it works!

A few points. 1. Make absolute sure your site is clear of Malware. Check Google Webmaster Tools and I also recommend running your URL through the Securi checker  (the scan is free, and the service is worth it if you were hit) http://sucuri.net/ 2. After a malware hit, Google recommends you use the "Crawl as Googlebot" in Google Webmaster Tools and then select "Submit this page and all linked pages to Index" option. 3. Make sure your sitemaps are up to date and properly submitted via Google Webmaster Tools. 4. I did notice in your question that you disavowed links. If you disavowed links that were actually helping you this could have had a negative effect on your rankings. Unfortunately, I don't know of a way to get these back. It's possible your drop has nothing to do with the Malware - it could be just an unfortunate coincidence. Do a site audit, check your crawl errors, try to match your traffic drop against known Google updates, and stay vigilant about improving your content and outreach. No definite answers here, but I hope this background helps. Best of luck with your site!

I agree that doing all you can to find contact details is the best way to go. Another way to find people is via social media accounts.

That's the gist of it, unfortunately.  Cyrus posted in this blog entry a Tweet from Duane Forrester of Bing saying over time, they learn that 302 redirects encountered repeatedly are more permanent and begin to treat them like 301 redirects.  I would imagine Google does something similar because it makes sense to do, and would improve search results overall, but I have no evidence to back that up.

Hi Sylvain OK, if it is a 302 then no authority will be passed. A 302 redirect is an indicator that the redirection is temporary and therefore will change. Until the redirection is changed to a 301 (permanent) then no authority will be passed over from the backlink. There is more info on redirection here: http://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection Do you have access to the abonnes.hospimedia.fr sub-domain so you can update the redirection to be a 301? Peter

Crazy, I have quite a bit of experience with this exact scenario: law firms using geo subdomains to target specific areas. Here's my findings and suggestions based on actual results and experience: SEO on domain.com benefits atlanta.domain.com. This is a fact. If Starbucks decided to create subdomains tomorrow for every location, their subdomains would benefit from 91 DA. That's how Findlaw, lawyers.com and all those guys get first page placement with high DA and low PA. Digital Diameter is right, subdomains are more effective and directories are more efficient. UNLESS you have a really good multi-site CMS. Then you can be equally efficient and more effective. I hope this answers your question, if you want some help or have any other questions, PM me.

Howdy, Based on the information, I can't tell you for sure what to do, but I can give you some general guidelines. The major search engines have indicated they will treat 302s similar to 301s if they see them long enough, so it's quite possible those redirects are getting crawled and indexed, and even passing some authority. If you block them via robots.txt, it will prevent search engines from crawling, but if the URLs are already in the index, it will do nothing to remove them (you'd have to put a meta robots NOINDEX in the head, or use Google Webmasters URL removal tool) After you decide what to do with these URLs,  you can tackle the parameter problem - which is only an issue if you choose to keep them in the index. Proper canoncial tags will go a long way in addressing these, and is the proper way to go. You can also address parameters in Google Webmaster Tools, but this is generally a less ideal solution than using canonical tags. Sorrry for the very broad answer. Feel free to follow up with any specifics you might be curious about.

Similar to Michael, my IT team is saying Googlebot is causing performance issues - specifically during peak hours.   It was suggested that we consider using apache re-write rules to serve Googlebot a 503 during our peak hours to limit the impact.  I found the stackoverflow thread (link below) in which John Muller seems to suggest this approach, but has anyone tried this? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4730376/how-to-set-robots-txt-or-apache-to-allow-crawlers-only-at-certain-hours

Thank you, That put my mind at rest. I was also concerned about the wayback as I have used it many times to find out details of an old page when the google cache doesn't show me what I need.  So an extra thank you for that info link as well.

Look no further than our beloved Mozzer Ryan Kent. http://moz.com/community/users/312503 He's the 2nd highest ranked user on Moz. I personally referred him some business. Tell him Francisco from Planet Marketing mentioned you.

Hey, It's a little difficult to understand your question. To clarify, are you asking why there is no link from your navigation menu to the high5store.com/c/BollywoodSarees page?

Hi Kerry, Masoko has a good point.  If the URLs of the page change each time, there will be a different affect than if it's the same URL or you use the canonical tag on them.  So, an example would be helpful. That said, assuming the URL stays the same, then the question is whether the content is just changing order or different content/products are being displayed. If the same products are displayed, but in a different order, then you may see some minor fluctuations in rankings because the content is shifting around, but it shouldn't be much.  This could affect both the rankings of the category page and the products displayed on the category page.  However, since there really isn't any such thing as static rankings, you may not even notice. If different products are being displayed every time, then you may see some larger fluctuations, especially if you don't have much other content on the page other than the products.  Again, you may see changes in the rankings both of the category pages and the product pages. Kurt Steinbrueck OurChurch.Com

Thanks Lewis, I get nervous indexing pages with very little content, some of these pages. Some of these "Snippets" have maybe a paragraph of text and 5 corresponding lines of code. Oddly enough, some of these snippets have gotten me organic WordPress leads. Just want some peace of mind Thanks

Great list Keith. I would add: 2. Contact webmasters to delete them and document progress Documentation (use a Google Doc) is a key and you can share it with them to show that you are taking steps to adhere to their guidelines. Include date, url, email of webmaster, and status (links removed, didn't contacted back, wanted money and so on).  Good luck!

Hey Gary, I'm not worried about the main content on the site. At the moment Google is like removing 10 URLs per day from their index. The cached copies are creating issues, I think. Forgot putting 'noarchive'. Surprisingly, also the crawl stats show that the average crawl rate decreased. I placed the noindex,follow tags on September 28th and till now Google merely removed 80-90 URLs from their index solely based on that (without manual intervention).

Yes site a was a victim of Penguin last december but has been cleaned up since. But i will de double checking before we 301 everything

Looks like it's good. I have the same problem with Facebook, so I added the url in the FB embed code but Google does it automatically. You're fine :).