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Hi, Everybody has issues with the AdWords API - as Google revoked access to a lot of companies and now it looks like they are after all of us I agree with you that they did had some issue with communication especially with the Adcenter - but overall I am sure they have some solid reason - what I don't understand is why they didn't open up and be transparent. I don't think there is a good replacement for Raven overall - on the features they provide and that are not present in other tool kits.

Thanks Edward! I will check out your recommendations.

Hello! Floodlight has more to do with Google's DoubleClick platform than anything. It allows your agency to have direct feeds for their DoubleClick advertising. I would definitely recommend putting it there if they feel it is necessary.  It most likely means they are using the DoubleClick ad network to promote your business via content ads. Having this tracking code will allow them to make faster, smarter decisions about what leads to a conversion from the DoubleClick network. Yes, it does suck that all Google tools can't run off the same tracking code, but they are probably working on it.

This doesn't look like the newest version of Google's remarketing code. Check your Tracking info and update it site wide. It should look something like this:

That depends on how much you are paying for CPM for Fetchback and how much Fetchback increases your traffic or conversion goals if you are measuring revenue, what the total revenue increase is, and if that offsets your cost Does the return from Fetchback warrant the cost, or would some other marketing/remarketing program give you a higher return? I'd suggest testing it out to see if it increases your 45% Return traffic. What would you consider an acceptable or successful rate of increase? 50%? 60%? Figure that out and measure the performance of Fetchback against that metric. In another vein, is it possible to create sophisticated rules for your Remarketing on Fetchback? Perhaps you can create a set of rules where Fetchback only displays ads to your 1 time visitors who have not been back in X amount of days, or something similar.

Should I use the Remove URLs tool in Google Webmaster tools to remove them, before making my site live or after I made it live? ---- NO Should I remove my site completely and re-add it, and have it verified again? --- NO Should I just remove the old sitemap and re-upload the new sitemap and ask Googlebot to re-crawl my site? --- YES (do not even have to remove in WMT, just re-add, but replace in server new sitemap.xml before re-add) And I should also probably re-upload a new robots.txt file and remove the old one. --- If changes yes should prob do a 301 redirect --- YES, on pages that are needed to be for User Experience purposes. For bot purposes do a operator search in Google "site: yourdomainhere.com" -- then 301 any pages here to their redesigned counterpart address. A piece of advice, would be to have a nice, high quality, industry relevant content distribution strategy for launch and post launch - get lots of G+'s to that new content, and make sure the new content has the new architecture As Zach says though, the most important part is the 301's as if this is not meticulously planned for and implemented correctly it will mess with rankings and will also hurt user experience

Hi Sara, They are definitely beneficial when added correctly. For instance, I've added one here for a site I help run: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/swish-plastic. My recommendations: Fill it out as completely as you can Link to other social profiles/pages in the External Links section Add links to your blog and homepage It doesn't take that long, and you get a number of links from an authority domain. Thanks

I would not recommend you to add any PR to your website after submitting it somewhere else. From other side if you have your own blog on your website and it is linked with Google+ (I mean authorship) profile it may give you some benefits. Cheers, Russel

Thanks very much for this, was really helpful! I've been through my listings and found that my copy could be seen as a little spammy, so I've made it much more neutral and blank. I'm hopeful this will cure it! Thanks for your time and expertise

thanks Moosa

Great!

Hey Ewan - I recently published a post focusing on beginning to shift from SEO to CRO over on Jason Acidre's blog, it may give you some inspiration; http://kaiserthesage.com/seo-to-cro/ Please feel free to hit me up on twitter or G+ if you'd like to discuss anything further. Cheers!

tried google places but too many problems with merged listings and scraped information being added to the page without any input from the so called owner- one of the spammiest things on the web as they regularly contain incorrect information

Hi GoodLegalAdvice, I'm sorry to hear you've run into the dread review issues. This will require a somewhat lengthy response. Visiting your + page, this is quite concerning: [image: photo.jpg] Paul d'Oliveira reviewed 4 weeks ago Quality ExcellentAt d'Oliveira & Associates, our lawyers and paralegals are relentlessly committed to serving you, the client, to the best of our ability, to ensure that you receive the largest settlement you deserve for your personal injury case as quickly and efficiently as possible. We begin working on your case within 24 hours after you retain us. "Our motto is: The client comes first" Why has the business reviewed itself? This would definitely be a violation of the guidelines (see:http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&topic=1656880&answer=187622) and it looks like it was posted 4 weeks ago, so perhaps this is the root of the problem? I wouldn't suggest that you have anyone here at SEOmoz try to post a review on your page, unless they've actually done business with your firm, or that will only worsen the problem. This issue of lost reviews is incredibly widespread, and very often, there is no apparent reason for the reviews being lost. Google's Vanessa Gene wrote this post (https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/business/technical-issue/mPz5bqu7ViM) when the first wave of missing reviews back in March triggered a slew of posts in the Google And Your Business Forum and it was updated in September by Google Rep Jade. I'll excerpt the whole thing here: _**There have been a lot of questions about reviews lately in the forum, and we wanted to address some of the more common ones. Before we dive in, we want to reiterate that we do read about issues that you’re experiencing, and we’re working hard to overhaul and improve our reviews system to make it better for everyone. Yes, it’s going to take time, and we know that can be frustrating. But we hope the work we’re putting into long-term fixes today will significantly improve your experience soon. 1. Where did my reviews go? You may have seen reviews disappear from your listing. A few reasons why that may be the case: Reviews from third-party websites are no longer displayed on local Google+ pages. Below the reviews by Google users, we may link “Reviews around the web” on third-party sites. Reviews are removed from Google+ Local if they exhibit spammy behavior. We can't share specifics about what signals we use, but our goal is to provide end-users with high-quality information they can trust and use that info to make informed decisions. (We can share -- reviews with URLs in them are automatically marked as spam. No URLs, please!) We also remove reviews that violate our content policy guidelines. We know that sometimes our algorithms may flag and remove legitimate reviews in our effort to combat abuse, but believe that overall, these measures are helping to ensure that the reviews appearing on local Google+ pages are authentic, relevant and useful. Here's our reviews posting guidelines and policy: http://goo.gl/LtFCS There are duplicates of the business's listing, and your reviews are living on one of these duplicates. You’ve moved locations. Note, that we intentionally do not carry over reviews from an old closed location to a newly opened one. Keep in mind that some reviews may have been marked as private/removed by their author. When Google+ Local launched on May 31, reviewers were given the option to publish their reviews under their Google+ profiles or mark them as private. If they marked them as private, they won't show up on a business listing.**_ 2. How do I know which of the above reasons is affecting my listing? **There’s not much you can do to troubleshoot this — it requires a deeper dive into our system’s backend. In the case of #3, try searching for your business's exact name or address on maps.google.com to find duplicate listings.  ** 3. How do I get them back on my listing? If you see your reviews on a duplicate listing, we can try to merge the duplicates back in to one listing. Two things to note: 1) It takes several weeks to merge listings, and 2) There is no guarantee that merging the listings will bring the reviews back. Contact support using this form: Select I have verified > Yes > There is a duplicate — give the support team a few days to get back to you, they've got a lot of tickets to work through. If users have deleted or marked their reviews as private, we have to respect that decision and there’s nothing we can do to show the reviews. Similarly, if you’ve closed your business at a particular location, those reviews cannot be moved over. 4. Where are my owner responses? Here’s the deal: Google Places allows multiple people to own a listing. So you may have claimed your account, but someone else may have claimed it before you and is still considered an “owner” of the listing. The last person to have updated the listing is considered the main owner, and only responses from that account will appear live on the listing (so, if the other owner updates the account after you had left your response, your responses will be removed from the listing). Here’s something you can do to make sure you’re the most recent owner: Go into your Places account, click to Edit your listing, don’t touch anything, and hit “Submit.” That should ping our system, to let us know you’re the most recent owner. Give it a couple days, now try again to leave a response. 5. That review is clearly fake, written by an ex-employee, etc. — how can I get it removed from my listing? There's no guarantee we will remove it, but you can report it directly to Google Places support and we will investigate _**Link to form: http://support.google.com/places/bin/static.py?hl=en&ts=1386120&page=ts.cs Select: I have verified > Yes > Reviews > My page features false or inappropriate reviews > Fill out the form, hit Submit, and await an e-mail response from a member of our support team. 6. Why are the reviews on my listing not related to my business? Reviews can sometimes get reassociated to another, similarly related listing. If you’re seeing reviews on your listing that are not related to your business, please use this Help Center form to get in touch with our team, and we’ll work on getting it removed: Link to form: http://support.google.com/places/bin/static.py?hl=en&ts=1386120&page=ts.cs Select: I have verified > Yes > Reviews > My page features false or inappropriate reviews > Fill out the form, hit Submit, and await an e-mail response from a member of our support team. 7. One of the links in “Reviews from around the web” is wrong — it’s going to a page of reviews about an unrelated business. How do I get rid of it? Those links are generated algorithmically, and sometimes we get it wrong. If you see an incorrect link, please use our Help Center troubleshooter to get in touch with our team, and we’ll work on getting it removed (note: it takes several weeks to fix): Link to form: http://support.google.com/places/bin/static.py?hl=en&ts=1386120&page=ts.cs Select: I have verified > Yes > Reviews > My page features false or inappropriate reviews > Fill out the form, hit Submit, and await an e-mail response from a member of our support team. 8. Why can’t my customer leave a review? Say your customer tells you that they’ve gone to your listing, but were unable to submit a review. It’s very difficult for us to troubleshoot and investigate secondhand reports. Ask them if they’ve created a Google+ account (they should get a prompt when they go to leave the review). Ask them to try posting a response in a different browser. Ask them to wait a few minutes and try again. 9. How can I report inappropriate/spammy reviews? Hover over the review in question and click on the light gray flag icon to tell us you think it’s inappropriate/spam, and we’ll look into it. If you’re seeing a large network of spam, too many for you to individually mark each one, start a new thread in the forum. We’re looking out for those reports and investigating. 10. I’ve reported a review on my listing, but it’s still there. Why won’t you remove it? Note that we very rarely remove reviews. You can read our removal guidelines here. 11. But none of these questions address the issue I’m experiencing? The information above addresses almost all the issues you can experience with reviews on your listing. But we know that sometimes, new bugs can crop up. So if none of the information above applies to you, start a new thread here in the Business forum and we’ll investigate.**_ You may see some of the causes of your issue in that post. I wrote an article about this issue here at SEOmoz in August: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lost-your-google-reviews-take-a-proactive-stance And in that article, I highlighted a thread that Google And Your Business Forum Top Contributor, Mike Blumenthal, started in the forum for people to report their lost reviews. Here is that thread, and as you can see, it's got hundreds of reports on it: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/business/0f1Cu9yLIzY/J21OJDPL1NUJ[1-25 Mike also wrote a good little post listing some of the issues that cause lost reviews here: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/07/30/google-local-and-review-issues/ And here is Mike's highly acclaimed post about what to tell your client if he has lost reviews: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/08/08/what-should-you-tell-a-client-when-google-loses-their-reviews-a-4-part-plan/ Definitely read those posts. The bottom line is that lost reviews seldom return, unfortunately, and if none of your legitimate clients can now leave reviews, it sounds like there is a freeze on your account. I'm not positive about that, but it seems likely. What can you do? Follow the advice given above by the Google Reps and Mike Blumenthal, and if you can, remove that forbidden review of your own company from the + page. This is about all you can do. As you can see, you are definitely not alone in this issue, but that's small comfort. Sorry not to have an easy fix, but this has happened to so many businesses and there is at least one very clear violation on your + page. My advice is to do what you can to remove it and continue to research the issue. Good luck!

I don't know the solution but API rankings don't agree with the SERPs that I am seeing. A couple months ago they used to be in great agreement.  Not so much now.

But they only work in US, UK and FR and I need additional locations. Also, as I am doing this for SEO + bringing quality traffic I am looking for something a bit more than PRWeb. Thanks though!

In your space you need to show people your good and help out in communities. I would also try to focus on one niche type of site and get known for it in the industry  or find someway to differentiate yourself. I would reach out to marketers and "I.T" people who dont build sites and try to get them to refer you.

Ryan Kent makes it all clear at http://www.seomoz.org/q/so-what-do-you-get-when-you-become-an-oracle

Thanks I appreciate the response. I'm definitely looking at as a long term strategy to build authority. Do you see any downside to submitting to all three sites? Obviously creating duplicate content but seems to me it should fall into the same category as video sites where the dup content doesn't really hurt you. I don't know if that is the case so would like to hear from those that have more experience submitting to the document sharing sites. If there are issues with dup content is it best to pick one site and build up a channel or mix up your submissions across all three. Thanks