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Canonicalization is a bit of an "it depends" answer in a lot of cases. If the domains are really identical and if you want to discontinue using the two duplicate domains, then 301-redirects are probably the best long-term bet. If you need to continue using the other two domains (as landing pages for other marketing campaigns or paid search, for example), then 301s aren't going to be viable, and cross-domain canonicals should be a decent choice. I'd also say that if you just have a small number of duplicates pages (not the entire sites), then canonical tags are a good bet. The only time I'd be cautious with 301s is if: (1) one of the domains has a bad history or questionable link profile, or (2) you're 301'ing a large number of domains - two domains is probably not an issue. In that cases, canonical tags may be a little safer (people aren't gaming them as much as 301s - yet - so Google isn't quite as suspicious).

Right, Just imagine all online marketers having a quick link up method. Im sure if everyone had a link back to their social network below each post there would be much more networking going on.

Thanks guys...post penguin, I was a little concerned too.

Hi Irving, yes, you are right. The https login page is the "problem", other pages that I visit after are staying on https, as all the links on these page are https links. So you could surf all the pages on the domain in a https mode, if you visited the login page before I spoke to our it department about this problem and they told me it would take time to program our CMS different. My boss then told me to find another, cheaper solution -  so I came up with the noindex,nofollow. So, do you see another solution whithout having to ask our it department again? They< are always very busy and almost have no time for nobody

in that situation, my recommendation would be a 302 to the next highest related page in the chain (such as the sub-category page or the category page above it), with the custom "we're sorry but that product is out of stock" message. If a product doesn't come back in stock over a relatively defined length of time (30 days, 60 days), etc., you should have the policy where the 302 becomes a 301 to that same page, with the same message.  It would mean that if a product DOES come back in stock after that, you'd cause some confusion from an SEO algorithm perspective, but it's the right thing to do.

Zachary : I believe Penguinn attacks for a lot LESS than the volume you're describing especially if there are few powerful links to begin with.

Yes, see the link I posted above and you place it in your PHP file before any HTML or headers are outputted.

The uk version of the site was first. It was beyond my control. I would obviously have set them up as completely separate subdomains. I'm just wondering if the key terms the UK site was ranking for if Google looks at that and only ranks one site associated with the root domain for a term like "iphone insurance". US Google still ranks the other site (UK version) for several terms.

Why not keep Buddypress, but disallow search-bot traffic to the root directory where it resides? You can easily do that in robots.txt. User-agent: * Disallow: /buddy-press-directory/

Hey there, Sorry that you're getting some confusing On-Page reports. Since this is more of a help question, rather than an SEO questions, I am going to migrate this over to ZenDesk (our help ticketing system) and answer you there. You should receive an email once the ticket has been created with a link to the ticket itself. In the future, we recommend that you direct any questions about trouble shooting our software to help@seomoz.org so we can look into the problem for you. That's why the Help Team is here! :] Thanks, Chiaryn

Thank you

I have a lot of clients just like this guy who have high PR for a site that has had little to no traditional SEO work done. Usually they have a domain that's old and back links dusty old chamber of commerce sites. I would sell him on the 301 re-direct. You have to show him how without the re-direct, he's essentially competing with himself. Most small business owners I've dealt with will cede control if you explain this properly. Now if I read between the lines, it sounds like this guy may have lost confidence in your abilities, which if that's the case, your best bet may just be looking for a graceful exit. If he doesn't trust you as an expert in what you do, you're going to be fighting a losing battle from here on out with him. Worse yet, you won't be getting paid for it. If this is indeed the case and you have honored your agreement with him, I would chalk this up as a learning experience and monitor the site from afar - hopefully it will rank eventually and you can then send him an email to make nice.

Both Shane and Nakul gave some good advice, so I'll just add my 2 cents. As your domain is new, this could have serious implications for your site and it's ability to rank. I can't say for certain it would hurt, but it sure would make it a likely candidate for an algorithmic penalty. 302s sound better than 301s to me, but even that many 302's redirecting to such a young site should throw up spam warnings galore at the Googleplex. Additionally, adding the extra layer of his site... typindomain.com ---> hisredirectsite.com ---->mysite.com ...might actually complicate things instead of making them better. In the end, I think there might be easier ways to gain the same amount of traffic in a long-lasting, low risk way.

Dan, thanks for taking the time to look into this, I've sent your answer along to my developer, I'll update the thread if we find something that could help out other readers.

Hey David, It looks like our engineers found an update that Facebook has made some changes to their API that has disabled the type of authentication that we use to connect the Facebook page to your campaign. We are looking for a solution to this issue right now, but I'm afraid it may take a while for us to find a way to work with the changes that Facebook has made, so thank you for your patience in the meantime. If you have any other questions about this issue, I would recommend that you write in to help@seomoz.org, where the Help Team will be able to answer you directly. -Chiaryn

The best solution to this problem is to 301 or rel=canonical to the preferred domain ie: if a user types in domain.com you redirect to www.domain.com Make sure you do this for all domains/subdomains you have pointing to your site and add the trailing slash to the domain i.e. http://www.domain.com/ as this gets added anyway. This will stop the page reporting as duplicates, also Google will only see one version of your pages so it definitely won't jeopardise SERPS, in fact it should pack some rankings bonus' for you. The following article covers the rel=canonical solution http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/canonicalization This one covers 301s http://www.seomoz.org/blog/url-rewrites-and-301-redirects-how-does-it-all-work Hope that helps Justin

Sorry Johannes I think I confused matters... I didn't mean there is spammy content now, I mean the spammy content that you removed. I'll be cursed for saying it but it's quite possible some of that spammy stuff was working if there were exact matches in there then which aren't now. Google isn't perfect yet so unfortunately some spam does still work (for now) though it will likely hold risks too. My suggestion with that was to look at the spam that was removed and figure out how to incorporate some of it back into the site in a non-spammy way. With regards to the link numbers, yes if it was me I think I'd remove at least some of those footer links too. My mistake with the rel canonical, I didn't spot it but just noticed it was a bit lower down. The duplication could well be the issue, but if that's the case and the dupe is no longer there then it should sort itself out pretty quickly.

Yes, the resource is still correct. The 302 will pass none of the link juice, changing to a 301 will pass most of the link juice (90%+).