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The easiest way would be to add a disallow line to your robots.txt file. From Google: To block access to all URLs that include a question mark (?) (more specifically, any URL that begins with your domain name, followed by any string, followed by a question mark, followed by any string):``` User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: /*? More info: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=156449

I agree, if you can see the content in the code and it is available to the customer... I think you will be okay. I think hidden content means content someone on the outside cannot see or access.

Indexation of ad-server code may prove tricky as often it will have a generic & dynamic make-up (i.e. JavaScript). It depends on how you set-up the code and ultimately how your engine will serve the code to end users. What you are wanting to achieve is definitely possible through automation (whether via an ad-server or a custom script). The variable is just how the ad-server you use serves the listings. (You might like to try DoubleClick or OpenX first. Both are free). Best of luck! Anthony

it is like selling ice to eskimos in terms of convincing the brand managers who are convienced that they have too much equity in their existing brands to dillute/consolidate I understand your situation as I have been there myself on more then one occasion. Having worked with eskimos I have learned they like money, so perhaps speak to them in financial terms. I would request a meeting with those who have the authority and ability to make a change and share the following ideas: combining the two brands into one would be a significant cost savings. Product labels, designs, two websites, all aspects of branding from commercials, ads, promotional material, etc. can be condensed into one yielding savings. sales can be increased. Why does a mayo company maintain a website? They probably aren't selling their product online so they recognize supporting their customer based with recipes and other information is helpful. By combining their sites their rankings in SERPs should noticeably improve. Rather then having the #5 and #7 results perhaps they could be closer to #1. as Sha suggested, they can wrap a promotion around the name change. Engage your customer base in a tweet-fest and otherwise ask them for input. Ask your customers to vote for their favorite brand name. if they established a single brand name their advertising dollars should work more effectively. Creating a single commercial/ad that runs nationwide is going to be more effective then splitting the country up. From personal experience I had never heard of "Best Foods" until I moved to California. When I watch tv and see a "Best Foods" ad because I am seeing a West Coast feed, the "Best Foods" ad is wasted on me. With a single brand, it would be more effective. Almost every piece of logic involved indicates a brand merger. The only legitimate concern is how to handle the transition, and that is a management/marketing decision. A label can be produced with both the Hellman's and Best Food's logo on it then after ?a year one logo can be dropped. We live in a time where we have seen industry giants well known throughout the country fail and close their doors forever. In most cases, these companies developed a successful strategy but failed to adjust. New businesses who weren't held down by past thinking flew past the old companies. It's up to your client whether that analogy applies to their situation. As an SEO, your role isn't to force them into making a change they don't want to make. Instead I would recommend educating the client on the benefits of making the change, and ensuring they are aware of the negative issues and costs of not following your advice. If the client understands and makes the decision, you've done your part and can move on to other tactics to improve their SEO.

Good points, Greg. From this it sounds like a viable business plan, I think we'll give it a go then. Much appreciated!

Cheers Ryan.

It's easy to implement. I've broken the content up into multiple sitemaps before as a diagnostic tool as well, to see which sections of the site are getting most of their pages indexed and which sections of the site have few pages indexed.

Thanks Gareth, I will give that a go. Just had a thought... redirecting it on my own site with a no follow in the robots.txt , wouldn't that still have the same effect as a nofollow on the actual outgoing aff link? that  the 9 redirected links would still only give 10% to the 1 internal link?

You'd want to undo that old 301 and replace it with new ones.

Every document I have seen all agrees that canonical tags are followed when the tag is used appropriately. The tag could be misused either intentionally or unintentionally in which case it would not be honored. The tag is meant to connect pages which offer identical information, very similar information, or the same information presented in a different format such as a modified sort order, or a print version. I have never seen nor even heard of an instance where a properly used canonical tag was not respected by Google or Bing.

Q&A is a little slow on the weekends, and really slow this Labor Day weekend, so it's taking a little longer to get responses than it might at other times. Hang in there, and I'm sure you'll get some comments. If not, ask the question again in a couple of weeks, in the middle of the week (and leave me a note on here and I'll delete this copy of the question).

One way or another, you definitely want to be redirecting those pages properly. As long as you have a decent content hierarchy with proper categories this should be relatively easy to achieve through htaccess. I couldn't give you the exact code to use but perhaps this discussion on Webmaster World will be a good source. You should definitely be able to do this without adding them all manually, it just depends on how big a URL change we're talking about.

Hi David, I'm updating older, unanswered threads. I'm really curious to hear what you decided to do in this situation and what the effect has been. Can you give us an update and any lessons you learned? Thanks!

The quality method would be a single domain with folders representing your categories. All the top retailers in the world use this method. You mentioned clothing so think of Overstock.com, zappos, macy's, etc. None of those sites have any keywords in the name and all will appear on the first page of Google results fighting each other for the top spot. The multiple domain approach is a crutch. It's something you can do when first starting out to gain instant results. Like most instant result solutions, it comes at the cost of long term, lasting goals. If you spent the time focused on your primary site, you will do better in the long term.

Not totally sure. You may find it will help the root domain if the sub-domain links back to the root domain and you still let the pages get followed.

Sadly, I'm in Montana, and have very few bushes around, so option D) is out of questions How is the new domain ranking for other keywords?  Maybe like 4 slice toaster, or whatever phrase gets a lot of traffic?  If it's ranking high for other phrases I would use it as a temporary test dummy.  Pretty up the website, and find out which phrases, designs, etc. convert the best while you improve your original /toaster website.  Once you have all the data you need, and a highly improved /toaster page, just 301 it over. However, if you don't have that much time, I'd just 301 it over, and go on with your day.  There's always room for hopes and dreams, but this whole 24 hours in a day thing can get in the way if you don't have help. If you choose to redirect, I would definitely put it on the inner /toasters page.  It looks like you already have a good amount of links pointing to your home page, and not many to the inner page.

Awesome! That did the trick -- thanks for your help. The site is no longer listed