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So, as for the first response, I don't see any negative competitive link building on our site. We do have a keyword alert for the brand name in place. For the second response, I don't think it's testing because there's never a similar problem with any other page. Only our Developer site is having this happen. Do you have any other ideas? I'd love some more feedback. Tyler

Hey, yep, simple for sure, but in this instance, just not the right thing to do. In an ideal world, if you wrote a piece on big yellow underpants then the page name would include those keywords so... http://www.yoururl.com/big-yellow-underpants.html But, for the homepage, this is a special case, you have no page name as such, just the URL itself so in the 99.9% of cases where you don't have the keywords in the URL rewriting the / to a keyword driven page (or vice versa) is just not going to do anything. This is a tiny thing, don't sweat it!

Hi David Thanks for your reply. This is how we did it: We redirected our old webshops with a 301 redirect on 07-07-12 to the new webshop. We had a new design, a lot of new content, new url structure, new product images etc. etc (but everything is unique) (we redirected everything to the root 300K pages) Nothing special happened and we conacted an SEO company to do a page on page redirect for the most important pages and then let the other links 301 to the root. On 23-07-12 we received our rankings back for 3 days, then there was a massive drop in rankings. Even the brand name is not showing up for the .com version. Now we changed the 300K redirects into 404 pages. So this is the situation: The most important pages from our old webshops are page to page redirected to the new webshop. All other urls are now 404.

Hi J.P. Your Blog title makes a great RSS feed page or value already, although xml declaration may not be required it seems like a great practice in terms of effective indexing. There are tons of free services and tools for managing Blog RSS feeds just like this   http://wparena.com/freebies/top-tools-for-managing-blog-rss-feeds/ | |

As long as you keep it up to date there should only be advantages. I use a free program called GsiteCrawler which runs once a week (automated with task scheduler) so it causes me zero maintenance time and I always have an up to date list of URL's for the search engines.

Google seems to be selective in displaying the rich snippets in results. I have a site that uses ratings snippets and only a tiny percent of the SERPs display with the rating stars. I can't figure out why some display with snippets and some without (# of ratings, rating score to not appear to factor), there must be something in the algorithm that decides this but it is not clear to me.

Hi StrathcomMedia, I'll answer the easier part of your question first, regarding missing reviews. Unfortunately, Google's handling of reviews has been one of the weakest aspects of their participation in Local. I could link you to thousands of posts and threads on this from the past half decade, but rather than do that, I'll just link to this recent post by Mike Blumenthal describing the current issues with reviews in Google+ Local: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/07/30/google-local-and-review-issues/ My advice to you about reviews and Google is that you should immediately copy any review you get because it's quite possible it will disappear at some point, at which point, you can put the copied review on your own website as a testimonial. Now to the more complex part of your question: your difficulties claiming your Google+ Local page. What is the exact error message you are getting. Please, copy it here and I will return to this thread. Thanks!

Hi BRP, As others have mentioned here, the impact inclusion in the Local results has is that your organic rank blends into your local display. So, you haven't lost your organic rank, exactly, but it has been pulled into your blended local/organic listing. It used to be common for powerful businesses to dominate pages in the SERPs with a local listing and organic listings (or even 2 of them) and even possibly other media like video, but this type of dominance has become really uncommon in the past year or so. For awhile, I was still seeing this effect of multiple listings for a single business in the SERPs for queries for which there was little information (let's say a search for a plant nursery in a small town where there are only two nurseries), but now, even this appears to have gone away. Instead, the 2 nurseries now would typically each get a blended listing and below that would be other information about them from sources like Yelp or chambers of commerce. If anyone in this thread comes up with a search that does not follow the new pattern (as in that of my hypothetical nurseries), I'd love to see it, as I'm just not seeing it anywhere anymore. Something good to remember...eye tracking studies commonly reveal that those local listings draw the most eyeballs to them, so fear not if your organic rank has now been subsumed into your local one. Your clients can be happy about that. Thanks for asking a good question here, BRP.

I believe this has to do with how Google groups things. A few years back people talked about using this trick in reverse by changing num=10 to num=9, num=8, etc. If the first result had two domains, one that was indented, the second indented result might actually be at result 10, but since they were from the same domain, they were grouped together. If it was result 10, and you should just nine results, suddenly you'd see that "second" place link disappear. My guess is this is what's happening here. Some of those results are in places 11-50 and showing up in the indented results.

Thanks Keri, That's useful Howard

Nope, no message in Webmaster tools and some very slight ranking on keywords like "vw campervan hire brighton" for east sussex but apart from that nada.

on page SEO is overdone <title>**Asia** Travel, **Asia** Flights, **Asia** Hotels, **Asia** Airlines at **Asia**.comtitle> <meta name="<a class="attribute-value">keywords</a>" content="<a class="attribute-value">**asia** maps, airlines to **asia**, flights to **asia**, hotels from **asia**, travel to **asia**, **asia**.com, hotels,airlines, airways</a>" /> One instance only of Asia in the title tag, lose the meta keywords completely they are useless and yours are spammy. also look at the sitewide linking. Way too many instances of "flights" in this menu. Put flights at the top of the menu and then just the locations below without "flights" in ever single link <a class="attribute-value">Asia.com</a>">Bangladesh Flightsa> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-country-info/China" >China Flightsa> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-country-info/Hong-Kong" >Hong Kong Flightsa> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-country-info/India" >India Flightsa> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-country-info/Indonesia" >Indonesia Flightsa> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-country-info/Japan" >Japan Flightsa> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-country-info/Nepal" >Nepal Flightsa> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-country-info/Pakistan" >Pakistan Flightsa> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-country-info/Philippines" >Philippines Flightsa> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-country-info/Singapore" >Singapore Flightsa> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-country-info/South-Korea" >South Korea Flightsa> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-country-info/Sri-Lanka" >Sri Lanka Flightsa> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-country-info/Taiwan" >Taiwan Flightsa> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-country-info/Thailand" >Thailand Flightsa> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-country-info/Vietnam" >Vietnam Flightsa> span> div> <div class="<a class="attribute-value">sub_menu_box_col_1</a>"> <span class="<a class="attribute-value">sub_menu_list</a>"> <b>Chinab> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-city-info/Beijing" >Flights to Beijinga> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-city-info/Guangzhou" >Flights to Guangzhoua> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-city-info/Hong-Kong" >Flights to Hong Konga> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-city-info/Taipei" >Flights to Taipeia> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-city-info/Tianjin" >Flights to Tianjina> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-city-info/Shanghai" >Flights to Shanghaia> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-city-info/Shenyang" >Flights to Shenyanga> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-city-info/Wuhan" >Flights to Wuhana> span> div> <div class="<a class="attribute-value">sub_menu_box_col_1</a>" > <span class="<a class="attribute-value">sub_menu_list</a>" > <b>Indiab> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-city-info/Bangalore" >Flights to Bangalorea> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-city-info/Calcutta" >Flights to Calcuttaa> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-city-info/Chennai" >Flights to Chennaia> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-city-info/New-Delhi" >Flights to New Delhia> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-city-info/Goa" >Flights to Goaa> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-city-info/Hyderabad" >Flights to Hyderabada> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-city-info/Mumbai" >Flights to Mumbaia> span> <span class="<a class="attribute-value">sub_menu_list</a>" > <b>Japanb> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-city-info/Osaka" >Flights to Osakaa> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-city-info/Tokyo" >Flights to Tokyoa> <a href="http://www.asia.com/flights-city-info/Yokohama" >Flights to Yokohamaa>

Hi Tyler, Thanks for the reply.  Over the last couple of months we've done next to no link building - our rankings improved since penguin so kept focussing on quality links rather than quantity. We have however been focussing on removing any links which we felt were spammy. But it is definitely weird.  It is definitely tied to the number of results Google is calling from though.  Why would the total number of results available change so dramatically for the same keyword??

Sorry Doug, I should have said that there were two drops, one for Panda, and then one for Penguin, with one coming in Mid-Feb and one Mid-April. Panda was a large drop, then as the site was recovering slightly it got hit with the Penguin update. The competitors are mainly Amazon and eBay. Both sell the products, but only sporadically and don't have them in any number. The client has dropped on the 4 big keywords from 1st-2nd position, to 5th-7th. Not a massive drop by any means, but in a market so small it has had a huge effect. The rest of the site’s rankings did drop, but they have recovered since then. The backlinks are not overly impressive, but nothing too alarming. There have been no warnings in Webmaster Tools, nevertheless, I have been working on the link profile and trying to add variety. After originally thinking this was the cause I have begun to reconsider, and in my digging found several faults on-page. I fixed most of these when I first got to work on the site, such as the internal linking and general optimization. There was also a spammy element to the internal linking which I got rid of. Fixing the internal linking didn’t have the desired effect, so I have re-approached that and changed it further. I also found an issue with the CMS in which it was generating a series of duplicated page titles (that mirrored the index page due to an error in the CMS to the lower pages). This would fit with the Panda change and the aim to reduce duplicates. This month, I have eliminated these, cleaned up the internal linking further and looked to vary the link profile (I'm hoping this will fix the issue, I just need to wait until it gets indexed). Also, as an experiment, I made a series of HTML pages (not in the CMS) to test the site. These ranked well within a month, and have continued to grow since then. Another issue the site has is the site itself. The code is outdated and messy with inline CSS and Java (some of which seems redundant) that all make the code to content ration something to be desired. I’m wondering if this could be a cause. The CMS has a penchant for duplication and the ‘readable’ code is not very clean, dates, filled with redundant code and is old. Thanks

Did you change anything? Is your site still showing up? Rule out a Google penalization by anwsering the following questions: Is your site still indexed? Does your site ranks for your domain name or branded words? Does your site ranks for unique terms from your title tags? If you have answer "NO" to any of these questions, you probably have been penalized. Otherwise, you don't have a penalty and you need to get high quality links.  Also, review your on-page SEO.

Hi Anthony, I would love to hear how you got on? what decision did you make and did it have an impact? I am facing the same dilemma as yourself. My theory is site wide brand text links or URL links should be fine however, its just theory, I have nothing to back this up. Before I make a decision on the matter I would love to hear your take on it. Regards Gav

Thank you Mike, Very appreaciated

You could, but it would be more difficult to rank sub-domains. Search for keywords like nytimes, apple etc since we know these sites do have certain sub-domains, none of them show-up in Google in Top 10. I would concentrate on the social media only.

Url? It happens when majority of the backlinks point to the Home page and are not evenly distributed throughout the website.

One of the issues Matt had was if the infographic sneakily linked back to the main site.  (I.e. the embed code linked the image back to the site). Ross Hudgens has a good article on infographics being devalued.  One of his main points is to link back to your site with your url/brand as opposed to anchor text.