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We are not using Wordpress for any of the tools, and all will be handled using PHP. This is a separate directory from our main site used strictly for the tools. Our main site does not use Wordpress either. The server resources are not an issue at this time, as we have a very powerful setup. I am not worried about how many times a subscribed user wants to ping their site. I am more concerned about where the ping is being sent out from and how many times.

It may not be an issue, but be sure to keep checking Webmaster tools and if needed you might have to disavow those links. Good Luck

If it's related to your industry and most of your competitor sites have the same type of links, that may be what Google expects to see. I think site speed & backlinks are two places where every niche is unique to itself. In a site speed example, I've seen photography keywords where every page 1 result the site takes over 8 seconds to load. Now, in an informational, mostly-text niche like say "george bush biography" that would be really, really bad. I think Google would expect to see sites in that niche load very fast. But photographers all have these full screen images, large portfolios, they're showing off the work, etc. I think the algo rightly realizes that if MOST sites that return a keyword are slower than average, site speed probably counts for a bit less overall as the distinctions are smaller. Same with backlinks - if your competitors all have these borderline links and they have authority, and you remove yours, I would fully expect your site to drop rather than rise in the rankings. Disavow is good for removing authority but doesn't often give you a positive bonus. It just keeps you from negative problems. To beat a competitor you don't need to avoid the negative. You need to add positive. I would focus on that side of the equation to see the best results.

This sound like a completely fine idea from the search engine optimization stands point. I mean Google can’t ban you for selling the same product on two different websites J Good Luck with that!

I understand Google is saying that they take action on paid links. But, there is no way really for them to find that out, is there? (unless it's explicitly said so somewhere on the website). About follow links - if correlation between follow/nofollow is "good" - let's say only 5-10% of all outgoing links are follow, then it's not gonna be considered spammy, cause it's quite natural. Hope this helps.

Hi Erica, Yeah, I get that about Google and links. just trying to come up with some reason why anyone would go to the trouble to submit a video review. Moz is kind of tough comparison, since it's an industry leader with many reasons one might post. Thanks... Mike

Hi Justin, By "embeddable" I was just thinking of some kind of social friendly gizmo/result that lures people in to find out what movie their life is like or what movie character or actor they are like or some kind of pop media crap like that for grabbing eyeballs out of social. Until comments can deepen page text, you might want to "noindex, follow" and remove those thin pages out of the sitemap and index, just so Google doesn't find too many thin pages to whack you over the head with. Best.... Mike

This is normal. First you need to evaluate this guide: http://www.elite-strategies.com/flavors-types-google-penalties/ and see what kind of penalty you have. Then you need to get all data from Analytics, Search Console both Links and Analytics there. And here is huge analysis... You need to check timeframe of your sudden drop. Are there some turbulence in SERP? New algo released? Anything weird in your own castle (server, CMS, hosting provider, etc)? If there is something - fix it. Also read about algos/turbulences in industry news sites. Check for messages in SearchConsole about "Manual Actions" and fix them if it's any. Check for sudden change of your links and create linking profile. If there are new and weird links from spammy sources - disavow them ASAP. If there is overoptimization for keywords - change anchor or disavow. This can be something Penguin algo related. Check for sudden change of your site - thin content, aggregated content, duplicate, irrevelant, etc. Check also user signals - low CTR, high bounce rate, low time on site and low % of returning users. Also check bad UI - design, navigation, mobile redirects, site speed, ads. Check for low trustworthiness - in Google Raters Handbook that was recently released. This can be - providing contact information, ToS, PP, etc. And last - overoptimization. This can be something to Panda algo related. Check for other algorithms - like TopHeavy aka Page Layout Algorithms that may affect your site. So after you know what can be your drop related then check and recheck. Isn't first nor last time when you can think about Panda but in reality was Penguin or vice versa. This can save you few months. After you're 100% sure what was then try to make changes to escape from algo penalty. Same happens to me almost year and half. We're running brand new site and faced sandbox algo. But we make few links more than we should and from low quality sites. So site was shown in SERP for month in first or second page and then suddenly drop to 10 page. Our organic traffic was fell to 1/10 of before almost overnight. But we make new traffic sources - social media and referral traffic so we could live without organic. We change links, make diversify linking profile changing links, anchors or even both. We also delete some links. But nothing happen in SERP position. Then i use disavow tool and 2 weeks ago there was algo refresh (Penguin). Almost overnight search traffic jump more than 10x and recovering previous positions and getting new and ever better positions. Today - this site make traffic as 10x than after recovering. The problem is that you need to make changes in site against penalty. And wait for algo refresh. You also need huge patience because some drop can happen anytime, but for recovering you need algo refreshes. And refreshes take months or even years.

Yeah - this IS problem. I have friend of mine who runs webhosting for "free hosting". And he told me that no way to get to 1st page with anything lower than 10k root domains is mission impossible. Also in terms of backlinks their scale is in millions. Only getting there is more and more links from anywhere in the world, any site from any niche. And i saw statistics... he is right. The problem that if you're in some similar industry then maybe patience is over. And maybe next Penguin will fix this, but we already heard this many times. So you can play few games: you can keep building links as before. Only pure white hat from various sources. Can be game magazine, game shows, local meetups, etc. you can use some gray hat techniques. Forum links, blog comments, etc. you can purchase some expired domains on game niche. Using tools as http://tool.domains/ for finding and evaluating them. this is blackhat and i won't recommend it but when all options are on the table - using PBN network or PDF linking. And this is "white side of blackhat". There is dark side of blackhat using software vulnerability like in 3P industry (Pharma, Poker and Porn). As i said before it's better to stay away from that, computer hacking can be also federal crime. Even don't think to use this for real client. Bad guys used them for "churn and burn" method where domain is used for few days, then blacklisted; but guys get new domain and used it for few days; next domain... sponsoring some good players - like Fatal1ty sponsoring some good video game streamers - you can look for them in Twitch or YouTube. One of closest example is mine friend called Gothika47 (i can connect you if you wish). He run video channel in YT https://www.youtube.com/user/VoodooHeadsTV and Twitch http://www.twitch.tv/gothika_47 (he was moved from Hitbox before month ago). So that streamers can bring you HUGE audience if you're used them proper. I was watch streams with over 1k viewers online and this is WOW because streamer listen watchers and can do their requests. creating infographic with LOL skills or even build calculator for LOL or item calculator; you can also make "for dummies" walktrough for novices; also strategy guides, clan guides, etc. You also can make a videos about that - only for novices. something other... just think about giving "value" to users As you can see this list isn't full and can be extended with many more ways. But always think "how we should add value to community?" Because this is important to them and this will drive sales. PS: Dificult situation - LOL is trade mark owned from Riot Games. And should think about possible legal issues from using their TM too.

Evidence of something around 11/18-19 is pretty strong at this point. Glenn's article that Peter N. posted is worth checking out. I've heard rumors of a mobile connection, but that's been hard to pin down - there does seem to be a "quality" aspect, but that's such a hard word to pin down. No confirmation from Google, but MozCast and similar data definitely saw spikes, and there was solid chatter. EGOL is right, though - that time period before Black Friday is a hairy one, search-wise, and there are so many variables to disentangle. I think something algorithmic happened, but that doesn't mean that any particular problem or drop was due to a Google change, and it's going to be really tough to piece together any particular story, I'm afraid.

Ah, my mistake. I'll ask around on our content team and see if they haven anything.

great - very helpful thanks!

You need to check link presence with help of Google Cache. Some toxic assets using link cloaking so only Google can see links, but users can't find them. Isn't fair, but can be seen often.

Cheers Peter. As usual with the dark arts of SEO, no one size fits all solution That's helpful though - Thanks

Hi Kristina, Thank you very much for taking the time to review our site. These 15000 pages were basically Layered Navigation pages. We did not feel that they were useful for Google, so we used to block them through robots.txt. However the Google bots got them somehow into their index.  So then we added canonical tags on our pages and removed the block from robots.txt (In June 2015).  Finally Google bots removed those pages from the index due to the canonical tags. We have around 2000 "real" pages on our website. Therefore right now it seems to us that Google's Index is showing the right number of pages. This has been the case since Sept 2015, but our rankings have stayed low.

Hey Bob, I'm sorry for your loss. I would start by taking a look at your past months traffic reports. Check your google analytics and webmaster tools/search console to see where the traffic was coming from the past 3 months pervious to this one. You are looking for traffic from keywords in organic search, but also for traffic from refers like Facebook or other social networks or sites. Compare the average of the previous 3 months to the current month to see where you are losing traffic from. In search console -> search analytics, you can turn on all the values: Clicks, Impressions, CTR, Avg. Position and then download that for each of the ways you can check: Queries, Pages, Countries, devices, search types. Get them all for the custom date ranges. Then compare the data, you should be able to see when you lost a bunch of traffic, and you may be able to see where you lost that traffic from, keyword positions you have lost, or channels that are not sending you as much traffic anymore. In Google Analytics, do the same kind of investigation to cross check with your info from search console. Pay close attention in GA to traffic sources, and time on site, bounce rate... If you lost some traffic from specific sources see how you can repair that. If your time on site went down, maybe your latests posts are not engaging, if your bounce rate is now super higher, what dod you change on the landing pages that has caused that... If you can identify where the loss in traffic came from by using the data from these 2 tools, you maybe able to identify why you lost that traffic. Example if you lost search position for your best keywords, go fix that. If you lost traffic from lack of engagement from specific social channel, go fix that or find a new social channel. Lastly, if you happened to take part in some link building in a certain time frame and lost traffic then, fix that. Hope that helps. Hit me up if you need any help.

This Matt Cutts video is from 2013, but I think it still applies today. I ran into the same issue once re: terms & conditions, asked a question very similar to yours, and somebody on this message board shared it with me. Hope it helps. Long story short, as long as you're not being spammy about it, you should be fine. I would add that since it's actually useful to your user, I would implore you to include it!

If this is such a niche market then competition is probably low.  In that case I would start producing good informative content that attacks each of the valuable keywords in the niche.  If you can't build up, then build out.

Have you had any success initiating the process of showing their duplication?  I can appreciate that companies can make Coke, Diet Coke, Coke Zero & Coke Life.  And maybe my opinion is biased as a competitor, but I don't think it is their intention to provide a different customer experience & only to saturate the market with their brands.