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Google uses a different data source for it's mobile results.  From my experience, mobile results can greatly differ based on the location of the searcher.

Hi Paul, Will do. I forgot to mention but I actually found the flaw with the 404 when I was looking at the SEOmoz crawler statistics. It said that my sub categories were duplicate content as the pages it was referring to were assigned to multiple categories. An example roughly based on my structure that it detected as duplicate content is the posts existing in: /category/seo/no1 and  /category/seo/no2 so as a result it was duplicate content. I deleted the sub categories and assigned them all to just the SEO category and realised that the sub categories were still resolving so to troubleshoot this I decided to add a random prefix to the end e.g. /seo/asdnas and the address still resolved to the root category. My theory was that if someone generated for example 100 urls and built links that google would see it as 100 duplicate pages due to the fact it was not 404ing or changing url when as you said 301ing. I will close the thread and mark your question as good answer. Cheers.

You can certainly edit an existing 301 redirect to point to a new location, Zora. Obviously you want to do this as little as possible, but there's nothing against doing it to to fix the otherwise ridiculously long redirect chain. The "permanent" part of a 301 is the fact that it tells the search engine to consider that the original URL's page will never be needed again and only keep track of the new URL. Whereas a 302 temporary redirect says "the original page will be coming back at some point, so keep it in the index". Paul

Hi Thomas, Yes, like many folks I do have some crappy links.  Moz is a little behind as I have BBB and about 1/2 dozen high authority links not accounted for (SEO spyglass is a better assessment of link profile).  More importantly, is that some of my main competitors that have less moz authority and really crappy links are sitting on top of the SERPs.  I actually have lots of keywords ranking high (especially in Yahoo and Bing where the domain is perceived correctly). Even the random products and categories that are selected by google for my keywords get respectful page 2 rank but these pages have no PR or DA and I have to think that if Google recognized my homepage as the authority page I would be neck and neck with competitors that have a fraction of the quality site (and content) that I do plus they have much more polluted linking profiles. See why I am so frustrated? Hunter

I use the Yoast Pluggin to place the same url on advanced options has de canonical url in order to remove the notice of seomoz

Hi Matt & Marie, Many thanks for your comments. I think it is Google only. Having not identified any other likely cause, I think that the Panda update on the 21st of November is the likely culprit, the timing is definitely correct. Thanks again, Gary.

Thanks!!

You really do not want to have a URL that is considered temporary unless you are changing domains or doing something like building a new website. From a search engine 1st perspective now if you want this thing to rank I think what you should do and tell me if I'm way off okay man is to use a landing page for instance go to http://www.blueprintmarketing.com then where you see the home button in navigation let your mouse hover over it. You will then see a drop down click on that it is a landing page. All landing pages is a separate way to add pages to your site that would work in this situation where you can keep the original site example.com and off of example.com you will not need any example.com/newevent  you simply have the power with landing pages to turn them on and off what framework are you using for WordPress if you don't mind me asking?

if you registered the domain through a regular registrar like DYN.com pairnic.com or enome you most likely paid the exact amount you would normally pay? if so and that domain was created in November according to who.is unfortunately you did not get the older domain however this can be a blessing in disguise sometimes people can buy domains with bad links to them. As always you like the domain keep using it the real age of the domain like when it was ever 1st registered try domaintools.com also http://who.is  then look under history. I hope this was of help to you sincerely, Thomas PS if you want to post the domain or private message me it I can tell you without a doubt the exact date it was 1st registered and the exact date it was last registered.

I found Marie's comments very interesting.  Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be my problem. I agree with Marie's advice not to do anything to respond to a perceived penalty.  Doesn't look like your site is "penalized" but the swings are extreme.

That is what I figured but I am still showing over 5k duplicates for titles and meta descriptions

I would not. Just build different sections of the site. An example of this would be an effective online retail store in automotive which has numerous makes/models under one roof. It can be done effectively, you just need to build out a good wireframe.

Sit back and relax knowing it is out of your control.

ahhh no index in .htaccess file. brilliant - thanks!

It all depends on what you're trying to achieve. If you want people to see a 404 page then serve them a useful 404 page. If you're trying to redirect link value then you should 301 to the most relevant page to what that URL used to have on it. For me a 404 error is a great opportunity to catch the visitor and give them something of use. If you redirect 404s you'll also reduce your site's general server errors, which can only be a positive thing, right?

Video content and audio content can be indexed and made SEO friendly  which can improve the search visibility on varied search options of the search engines. One of the ways is to add the video and audio content using microdata as per the schema.org. Usually when we add video we embed the code generated via YouTube for that video if it is on YouTube or for that matter any other video broadcasting site like vimeo, Ted, etc. For example: <iframe width="”560″" height="”315″" src="”http://www.youtube.com/embed/7xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx?list=UU0LI2nnnSO6lP8ZFj9FIdyA&amp;hl=en_US”" frameborder="”0″" allowfullscreen=""></iframe> But using the microdata format as per schema.org the same code can be written as : Video: SEO xxxxxxxxxx <iframe src="”http://www.youtube.com/embed/xxxxxxxxxxxxk”" frameborder="”0″" width="”640″" height="”390″"></iframe> Description, keywords and markup here . More information here: http://schema.org/VideoObject

Glad I could help! And thanks for the 'Good Answer' vote as well. Enjoy the rest of your day

Let's deal with 2nd question first re changing 301s. As I mentioned in your more recent question, the solution is to go back to the original redirect and rewrite it to go to the new correct location. As long as you still control the original redirects, (which is why you'll want to maintain your old domain for at least 180 days, preferably permanently) there's almost never a reason to chain redirects together like that. Always better to rewrite the original to the new location. In addition to a number of technical benefits, it makes those redirects VASTLY easier to maintain. As for a solid redirect plan - yes at its most basic it's a matter of ensuring you've catalogued ALL the old pages and written good redirects to the new pages. But there's plenty more to do if you want the transition to go really smoothly! For example - as in the info above, you'll also want to check the old site for existing redirects and make sure they get included and rewritten as one-hop redirects to the new page. Perfect example of this: original site had several vanity short URLS redirecting to landing pages. E.g. www.site.com/sale was redirected to www.site.com/category/colour/somereallylongurl You not only want to redirect the /somreallylongurl page to it's new equivalent, you need to make sure you've also changed the /sale redirect to point directly to the new page as well (not having to go through /somereallylonurl to get there). Really look for these - there are often more of them than you think. You'll want a quality assurance plan in place to test as many of the redirects as possible just as soon as the new site is live. One misplaced or forgotten "?" in a RegEx can completely foul things up. This is a daunting task, but it's essential to catch as many mistakes as possible before the search crawlers index the goofs (or your users run into them!). You'll probably want to divide this task amongst a group of testers. Watch especially for whether redirects resolve whether the address of a page ends with a "/" or not. You'll also want a solid plan for how to ensure the search engines find and index those redirects and the new pages quickly. This is sometimes done by placing the old sitemap on the new site for at least a few days so that the search engine spiders are forced through the redirects for all the pages. Not everyone agrees with this approach, so you may want to research it further. Here are several additional things you will absolutely need to do in Webmaster Tools. As soon as the new site is live, set up and verify a new Webmaster Tools account for Bing and Google. (You can even do this in advance using DNS verification method or if there's a placeholder page live at the new URL before the move) As soon as the new site is live, use the Change of Address tool in Google Webmaster Tools to point to the new domain. Use the  "Fetch as Google" in Google Webmaster Tools to find and submit a series of pages in different sections of the new site. This step helps the engines find and start indexing your new pages faster. Note that in Google, you'll want to request "Submit URL and linked pages". You can do 10 of these a month, so pick pages from different sections of your site for best effect. Use the  "Fetch as Bingbot" in Bing Webmaster Tools to to do the same thing you did in GWT above. Bing allows you to do 10 of these per day. and a total of 50/month. Use all of them, again from different sections of your site. You'll also want to make certain you have an effective robots.txt file in place to ensure the search engine crawlers aren't wasting their crawl budget on useless pages. Here's something else to think about. Can you get the owners of the sites that are giving you your most valuable incoming links to update their links to point directly to the new equivalent URLs? Doing this for even 10% of your top links has multiple benefits. The engines will find your new pages faster via the authoritative links, and those links won't lose any "juice" by having to pass through a 301. As mentioned in my first reply, now would also be a really good time to get a few new links to the new site from some strong external pages. You also need a solid plan for what tools you will use to monitor for missing/broken redirects and how you'll fix them quickly. Webmaster tools to watch for new 404s from incoming links Google Analytics (Make damn sure you have your tracking code included on your 404 page - many sites miss this so don't even see all the 404 hits). Open Site Explorer as a backup to Webmaster Tools for spotting broken incoming links Screaming Frog for an internal link scan to make sure you didn't create or inherit any broken links yourself accidentally When will you scan? Who will rewrite the .htaccess if fixes needed? (You don't want multiple people in there messing about). Who's responsible for updating the sitemap.xml file to the new one after a couple of days and resubmitting it to Google and Bing Webmaster Tools? Who will check GWT's Sitemap Details page to ensure the majority of the site is getting crawled and indexed, and will know what to do if it's not? Who will follow up with a search of the engines in several months to see if any of your old site URLs are still indexed and insure redirects are in placer for them as well? The whole point to all these steps is to use every method at your disposal to insure both Google and Bing fully understand the relationship between the old & new site, and to push them to transfer the old site's authority, rankings and traffic to the new site as quickly and efficiently as possible. And even though Bing may send less traffic, you still can't afford to throw it away, so you'll need to monitor it's own Webmaster Tools as well as Google's. Wow - I know that's a helluva load to think about so be sure to ask if there's stuff I haven't made clear enough. Paul P.S. The last thing is to accept that things will likely be a wild ride in the SERPs and traffic for at least two to three weeks after the move. Don't be tempted to overreact and start making large changes too soon if things look wonky at first. The only exception is 404s - fix those as soon as you detect them.