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Hi Bill, My pleasure...and, yes, correlation is probably not causation in this scenario. Probably lots of other factors at play. I hope there will be more documentation and commentary on this topic soon. The slideshows are pretty neat. But, as you say, the price is somewhat hefty.

It may have been, there have been no announcements from Google about it yet. Google makes about 500 updates a year, mainly the major ones get announced.

Many of us here offer consulting and other services, including myself. I don't feel like this is the place for self promotion, but I will say that there appears to be a number of knowledgeable folks here. And yes, I think the list of recommended companies/individuals is a good place to start.

For a business that's very local-focused, it's a good idea to use location keywords in your title tag and occasionally use them in copy on the page. So your title tag might be something like Bob's Computer Fix-It Shop - Alexandria Computer Repair. Then your homepage might claim "We are the most awesome computer repair experts in Alexandria, VA." Keep in mind, however, that searches with local intent often have the organic results buried underneath the Google local results. Make sure your Google+ page is amazing and encourage customers to review you on Google+.

IMHO It's not likely, just an algo change.

Thanks. Yeah I don't have 301 capabilities with our webhost but I did do a head tag html redirect for about a week or so with two pretty empty pages (as in content) of the old pages, but then couldn't find them on google searches so I just deleted the pages. I do have the 404 error page to access these pages fairly easy in case it is still found on searches. Is there anything wrong with my changing these url's or the logic behind it? Or continuing this trend. When is the right time to change a url? (Given this particular situation)... And do things like changing ".com/products" structure (in this case getting rid of it) have any negative impact on SEO? Thank you Area203 or Brad for any advice.

Hi Nick, They are using schema markup on their reviews (AggregateRating <a class="attribute-value">- http://schema.org/AggregateRating</a> This is why the ratings occur in SERPs. Have a read of this page http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=99170 and then research on from there. Good luck and private message me if you want to discuss more. Davinia

Directory links do help with SEO but, as with anything, there are good directories and there are bad directories. If the directory is nothing but a directory, that is, it doesn't contain any more content, then it is not a good directory. Try to get yourself included in directories that are a part of a bigger site that draw people interested in what you do. For example, if you are a coffee shop, find the websites that have a directory of coffee shops but that are actually about something else. It might be a blog about your city that keeps a list of businesses for their readers, or a site about living green and supporting local business.

I would use the user review snippets provided that you have active participation in reviews.

I don't think I have ever seen any data for "the most viewed" press releases. Some of those free press release websites might have a public view count, but sites like prnewswire or prweb etc, I don't think they do.

I am going to keep it brief and say this: Google is using an algorithm that mathematically combines 200+ factors. Within that there are many ways to have an odd result here or there. So, what I suggest is to look at a couple of things and determine your answer: Search engine ranking factors on moz. (These are opinions) Search engine periodic table from SearchEngineLand From these, you can see what matters to move something up. As to your search and where you land there are even additional factors like are you using non personalized search or are your results impacted by previous searches? So, a bit to learn, Good luck,

Matthew, How would you go about tracking user vs bot traffic on 410 header pages? We see that we got plenty of hits on the pages via Awstats, but no means to measure what sort of traffic these hits really are? Best Johan

Keep in mind that many non-EMD sites were also hit around the time the EMD effect went into place. Some folks have claimed this result is very similar to the -950 "penalty" from a few years back

It all depends - if you were to create 100 external links, each with a back-link that said "click here" and they all were linking to the same page, it takes on an unnatural feel and at that point, Google might cast an eye over what you are doing. Remember, Google looks for diversity in link pages and anchor text. They also look for links to (ideally) form a natural feel as part of content. Keep it realistic and you will be fine. Andy

Hi Kim, So far as I know, neither Bing nor Yahoo has ever taken a public position on this subject. You could try live chat with Bing here to ask about it: http://www.bing.com/businessportal But, I have some doubts as to whether they will be able to quote you a rule on this. I've never seen one. These are Yahoo's guidelines, but they make no mention of this factor: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ysm/ll/guidelines/local-01.html Miriam

Thank you Andrea. This is very helpful. The example you gave really clarified for me! We are going to make sure any changes we make will be of value to our users Thanks, ThatKwameGuy

Thank you very much for the help! Regards, Antonio

Hi Pravin, I wouldn't consider 120 to be overly excessive for an ecommerce site. However there's a danger that the footer links could be perceived as spammy (especially if the anchor text is keyword stuffed). I agree with Bryan - check to see if the links are getting clicks, and if they're not, streamline or cut them. Good luck!

1) Article creation and Publishing Are Good Now Days ? - Depending on the quality. Take this way, you hire a person with literature background and pay him $4 for 500 words to write something on medical related topic, what you think about the quality he/she will produce. He/she will google the key phrase and find some worthless aricles from directories and then reproduce the same thing in different words. Would it be of any help for the readers. I fear not. So, invest some time, spend money on it, hire professional writers who know the field and then the process will work. **2) Does Article Creation Still Have Good Impact On Search Engine Ranking ? -  **Do you mean article directories to get links. Yes they can help as long as you are not caught doing so. 3) Webmaster post one articles in different articles sites, So if we post one content in many sites does search engine doesn't look as duplicate content ? - Yes, duplicate 4) One Unique Articles Has To Posted In How Many Article Directories ? - no idea