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We had a caching error and I think google pulled whatever it could. The webmaster fixed the error and we rebounded (mostly) in the serp's. Oddly we regained our spot for a different product (almost same name different version) but it's actually more relevant and converts better. so it all worked out in the end.

thanks, i'm going with a combination of two. one seems to be decent and also intuition tells me it's good, and other one has no other sites currently well optimized for it, so it actually MIGHT bring more traffic than the better one because it's an easy win with less competition.

Thanks Irving, it worked

No one can give exact idea about it. I prefer Compare Link Metrics functionalityavailable in Opensiteexplorer to compare my website with competitors website because it gives me idea about where my competitors are doing better than me.

Thanks guys, good stuff

Joe, agree, that's a good model to live by, but you are right to be a bit nervous. Google behaves oddly about edits, and I was less than thrilled to read this tweet from the Local SEO track at the recent PubCon in New Orleans: Greg Gifford @__GregGifford__ from Google's point of view, when you move locations, you're starting a new business @__marybowling__ #pubcon 8:51 AM - 24 Apr 2013 On the one hand, I can 'get' Google's mentality behind this. Joe's Cafe on 1st Street may have had lousy coffee and lousy service, but the new Joe's Cafe on Center Street may have turned over a new leaf and have great drinks and staff, meaning that the business has been re-born. I think that is Google's rationale. But, honestly, for most businesses, a move of address does not  represent some major changes in products, policies or quality. It's just the same business in a new building. I wish Google would be a bit more flexible and understanding about this, but right now, moves can be a big headache. Good luck!

Actual pages reached through refinement.

Hi Matt, Oh dear, this is a problem I have seen reported several times, and the feedback from Google about it is kind of ridiculous. Here's an example of Googler Vanessa Gene's response to an issue like yours: We're pulling that photo in from your website's homepage. If you'd like it removed from the Maps listings, the easiest way to do it is by removing the photo from your site. http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=142916_On your business's Place Page, you may see photos from other sources as well, including pictures from the web and from Google users. _- Vanessa (source: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/pulling$20photo/business/eQTOtQOEG8w/StgwtDj6dowJ) It does appear that the image being displayed on the SERPs side of your result is coming from a blog post about sailing on the website, here, http://www.audiparramatta.com.au/au_partner/p_au_21540/en_home/experience/sailing_sport/sailing_news/2010_victoria_week.detail.2010~01~olympic_sailor_winner.html I find it rather silly that Google's solution is to remove the image from your website, thus diminishing your website's content quality. Honestly, I want to blog about this because I think it's such an odd scenario, with Google pulling totally random images for businesses. They could be of anything! What I do see is that it appears you haven't made the effort to upload any of your own photos to the Google+ Local pages. Perhaps there is a chance that if you do so, you might eventually see the current image replaced by one of your choosing. However, be advised that it is still taken weeks for images you upload to appear live in many cases. I've seen reports of 4-6 weeks. So, this isn't an issue you can fix quickly, if you can fix it at all. Sorry not to have an easy solution, but I hope you feel brought up to speed on this, in regards to the being a phenomenon affecting numerous businesses.

do you have enough unique content for 8 million songs pages? http://www.seroundtable.com/google-too-many-pages-16664.html

Hi David, Its tough to say without some more digging and information, it certainly looks like you have most of the common problem areas covered from what I can see. I will throw out an idea: I see you have a few 301 redirects in place switching from .html to non html versions. If this was done on a massive scale then possibly you have a google index with both versions of the pages in the index? If so it might not really be a big issue and over the next weeks/months the old .html versions will fall out of the index and your numbers will begin to look more normal again, Just a thought.

well your site is definitely being indexed by google... without doing a full seo profile on your site regarding competitors, keywords, competition in keywords, etc I couldn't really tell you the scope of the endeavor you are undertaking. All I can say is continue your link building efforts and popularize that site. Your rankings are not being slowed or delayed by Google, only by other sites beating you out. So keep working at it! Unfortunately, there simply isn't any amount of time that will guarantee page 1 results. It's all up to you and your SEO tactics and will definitely take some time to accomplish. Good luck!

Hi Tom Many thanks for the quick reply, it's much appreciated. All very clear, thank you! Cheers Richard

Hi, Tom! Thanks for the quick response - Yes we have implemented the 301 regardless, so I hope we will see our rankings improve again They actually already have, I checked GA and organic traffic has gone up 100% in the last week, when compared to the previous week. So something must be happening Thank You, Johan

Hi ZoraS, In short - yes, I think this site is pretty spammy and I wouldn't recommend putting in the effort to get links there. More than likely these links won't help your rankings much anyway, while at scale they could actively harm you.

Here is some more information on how Google picks its top references it's really not a lot to go on unfortunately however the Google algorithm is so so complex that it will do things we could never predict sometimes http://www.seowizz.net/2010/12/google-top-references-rolling-out.html http://searchengineland.com/google-testing-top-references-refinements-in-search-results-59351 http://www.ams.org/samplings/feature-column/fcarc-pagerank I hope this is been of more help, Thomas

That's good to know, thank you for the suggestion on creating geo based. I was hoping their was another way to rank locally for each city we provide services in. Maybe one day, i guess this type of business model isn't quite in Google's sites yet for local.

Hi Ivo, I've heard second hand (from respected SEOs) that when they switched TLD's it took much longer to recover full rankings traffic - but this was only one case and I'm suspicious to trust it. Generally, if you follow proper procedure for domain migration, including submitting sitemaps for both your old and new urls and also building new links shortly after the switch, you should see minimal loss in traffic. SEOgadget has a nice case study they did a short time ago, although I believe they maintained the same TLD. Changing both the folder structure and the TLD at the same time does complicate things and adds a degree of uncertainty, but it's better to have one 301 redirect instead of making a chain, so perhaps it's best to make the entire change at once.

Hi Ahmet I don't think the sitemap indexed is an issue. Also I wouldn't block it with robots.txt - cause they won't be able to crawl it! -Dan

The optimal redirect for both visitors and search engines is to keep the structure as it was, meaning #1. The optimal solution also follows your options numbering, meaning that for both search engine and visitors the last options is the least desirable. The optimal solution workload wise, is the exact opposite, as it often is. Depending on how well related the content is, it might be possible to opt for #2 but it is very rare that option #3 would work well as the content of the entire website, including all its subdomains, has to be extremely well related and basically only cover one single topic. A few simple questions might help: Are all the topics of every single page of the forgotten co-brands present on the homepage? If not, then #3 is not a very good option. Are all the topics of every single page of the forgotten co-brands present on the associated subdomain? If not, then #2 is not a very good option. Another thing to consider is the amount of pages that will be re-directed. I actually have a problem with that at the moment, as I am really not sure how well that will be treated by the search engines. IMHO you should look at how the redirects are for people first, bots second and equity/domain authority/etc. last. Not to mention that I think that no matter which group you put first, the optimal solution out of the 3 options stays the same as your numbering anyway.