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Not here, but many of our clients are well established and highly authoritative. I would anticipate that for smaller sites trying to build up (and survive online) the impact would be higher

Hi Martijn, The solution didn't work, I'm not sure if there is a conflict here but this is what my htaccess currently looks like: RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301] #RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on #RewriteRule ^(.)$ https://thespacecollective.com/$1 [L,R=301] #RewriteRule ^(.)$ https://www.thespacecollective.com/$1 [L,R=301] <ifmodule pagespeed_module="">ModPagespeed off</ifmodule> RewriteRule .* - [E=noabort:1] RewriteRule .* - [E=noconntimeout:1] <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^interstellarstore.com$ [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.interstellarstore.com$</ifmodule> RewriteRule (.*)$ https://www.thespacecollective.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Not a problem

Hi Olivia, Thanks for reaching out to us! I see you have also addressed a message to help@moz.com and we will get back to you ASAP Best, Eli

It's a bug from Google's end, you need to contact GMB support to fix this.

I have seen things like this happen before, but they're usually associated with a links penalty rather than a rich snippet spam penalty. When Google remove the authority pipelines for bad links, they don't magically decide to start valuing those linking sites again due to a reconsideration request (so in that area, it's common for people to get into an awful mess of unrealistic expectations) With rich snippet spam penalties, I have seen some pretty savage ones but usually they are more of an on / off scenario. To see the kind of continual decline which you say you are experiencing, is quite unusual Technical factors can influence ranking results, but they tend to influence indexation more than they influence rankings (e.g: making URLs which were previously hard to discover, easier for Google to discover, so new ranking positions can be created). Technical changes are (usually, there are exceptions) less good at pushing up existing rankings (which is more the domain of content, awesomeness and link-worthiness) "- Redirecting duplicate versions, fixing redirects on internal links" Something that can be done with the best of intentions, yet which can often be done wrong. For example, maybe you own a site and you notice that both of these URLs are accessible (200/OK): https://www.mysite.com https://www.mysite.com/ One has a trailing slash, the other does not. So you say to yourself, okay what we'll do is redirect one structure to the other! Seems logical right? But what if one of your structures (non-trailling slash) was more commonly linked to than the other (forced trailing slash)? When you make your change, suddenly most of your most important backlinks are hitting 301 redirects, instead of hitting your landing pages directly. In this hypothetical example, if you had picked the alternate structure (removing the trailing slash from URLs instead of forcing it) then the site may have performed much better. This is just a hypothetical illustration, but it shows that - simple ideas are never simple! In SEO we get paid for our analytical skills because they do matter and people need analysis pieces before making sweeping decisions, without realising the potential ramifications "There's also work on-page running in the background fixing up keyword cannibalization, consolidating content keyword mapping and ensuring the internal link structure is sound" Again, you may be shooting yourself in the foot in the short term. I am referring to what you term as "consolidating content" which usually revolves in reducing the number of pages on your website and funneling some content together, into fewer, more in-depth URLs which you hope will rank better. Totally the right thing to do in the long term, but in SEO, many strategies which yield long-term gains also cause disruption which causes short-term tail-off. If you JUST pulled yourself out of a penalty, was it really the right time to 'get disruptive'? I'd say no, it was not If you are consolidating content, Google may or may not rank your single new page as well (for different keywords) as the two or more pages which were funneled into the creation of your new page. Why? Well, from a technical POV, even when you deploy the mighty 301 redirect, it doesn't always transfer 100% SEO authority from the old URL(s) to the new URL Google tend to run similarity checks over their last active cache of the old URL(s), against the new page which you have supplied. If they seem % dissimilar, then that % of SEO authority is removed from the equity transfer of the 301 redirect. By similar, I mean something akin to, taking all the content from both (old vs new) page variants and running something like a simplified Boolean string similarity test. I don't mean what humans think is similar, I don't mean what you think is similar. I mean - what a mechanical mind would think was similar / dissimilar (often very different) If Google didn't run such checks, you could easily by up authoritative expired domains, redirect them to yourself and gain loads of SEO authority for nothing. So Google wants to be sure, is THIS content which is receiving this 301 redirect - the SAME content which earned those backlinks? Might the webmaster who linked to that old URL, decide not to link to this new page? If there's much risk of that, even the mighty 301 redirect gets nuked in terms of equity transfer Your hope of course, is that your new URL will be so much better than the old one(s), that over time it will earn more links than they did. If you are lucky, some authority from the old page(s) will filter through, but you should certainly expect some degree of short-term tail-off. If you have done this just as you have escaped a penalty, I can see how the convergence of your technical disruption(s) and the late penalty, could be causing you significant issues Instead of doing types of work which remove URLs from your site, remove pages which could be indexing and narrow your content - I'd be doing EXACTLY the opposite. Creating new pages and content which is connected with new (yet relevant) keywords. Maybe work on the top or middle of your keyword (buying) funnel a bit. Get some digital (editorial) PR going, get some more authority and new pages which could be ranking in Google's SERPs. If you think about it, performing purely reductive work after you have had a massive traffic reduction, really isn't going to serve you very well Hope that helps

Your "authority " is on your domain - on your subdomain "www" (or without) but not on a new sub-domain. So if you want to take the authority with you, you need to pick a subfolder. Thatswhy -> no difference between sub-domain or new domain in your case. Also the reason why it should be possible to pick a subdomain, what i still wont do But if you link them well, you will benefit from your domain. Ok in this point, it looks more organic to link to a subdomain than to a different one.  But e.g. linking to a new domain wich is yours in the footer  is (according to john mueller) ok, because google is clever enough to know that this is not sponsored or spam, but one of yours.

Even if it's a static site you should still be able to utilise a .htaccess file, NginX redirects or web.config depending on your server configuration - to redirect certain URLs to other addresses. Just because a site is static, that doesn't mean that .htaccess (Apache) or web.config (IIS) will not intercept and rewrite https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/website/redirects/setting-up-a-301-permanent-redirect-via-htaccess Just stick a '.htaccess' (extension only, no filename) in your site's root and edit to suit. Most apache sites will adhere to a .htaccess file, placed in the root. Be sure to use the 301 (permanent) redirect status

My sincere pleasure, Julie!

It's all good. Yeap, both hreflang tags in both pages. Think it this way: One hreflang is telling the actual language of the page. The other is telling that there is a version in other language. Best luck! Gaston

"1. how would a company this reputable with a DA 90+  be building pages like this without major penalties? (i realize it is from .au (australia) but from research they own that site too)" - actually being a reputable site makes you less likelyto gain penalties rather than more likely. A smaller less reputable site doing the same thing, would be more likely to garner devaluations and / or penalties. When you become authoritative and reputable, you gain 'trust' with Google. That's a barrier which you can eat into, instead of losing performance. Imagine two people in a friendship who really trust each other, yet one betrays the other. In all likelihood, that trust will be consumed but the friendship will survive. Now imagine the same situation between two people who don't trust each other, since there's no love lost - they will say goodbye and part ways. It may be difficult for a moral, human mind to accept - but trust is a consumable resource and businesses use it as such (just how it is I'm afraid) "2. how exactly does this work? are they selling links to people? did my competitor pay them to replace my link with theirs? why create a page that sounds like robots wrote it" - Ask them. Find your old link using Wayback Machine, show them your link existed and that it was removed and replaced with a terrible quality link. Maybe they have a rogue editor on the inside and you could bring them to justice. Maybe (instead) they'll refuse to care and they will wall up (to protect themselves). In any case, you could at least ask (without getting nasty about it, don't pick larger battles than you can win) "3. would it be a good idea for me to try to get the link back? it certainly was helping considering i lost 5 DA points when i lost the link, but it goes against everything that makes sense in what I've read about toxic links and keeping things clean" - I'd certainly try to get it restored. Wayback Machine might be able to help you prove your case and disparage a rogue editor for illegitimate linking practices

It's still quite important and helps Google to contextualize a page effectively. If you try to have an H1 without giving it the proper / normal prominence, Google will be wise to that and they will simply devalue your H1. Either have one loud and proud, or don't bother

As stated by Google, subdomains can be considered as part of your site, so the redirects can negatively harm your site and raise red flags although not as much as directories/posts. As the redirects are done on subdomains, then you should check with your domain provider or hosting provider in order to disable the use of subdomains and revert the issue. Daniel Rika - Dalerio Consulting https://dalerioconsulting.com/ info@dalerioconsulting.com

It will depend on the subdirectory structure. Generally, it is suggested for the post to be directly after the domain. Generally, the subdirectory is used for categories. I see it as a keyword opportunity: If you think that the keyword of the category can help the optimization of the post and ranking, then you can use the category subdirectory freely. For example, if you are running a course site, and you'll be posting a course on "Python", then "www.site.com/course/python/" would be a more optimized URL than "www.site.com/python/" as you are targeting people who want to find a python course. However, I usually refrain from using the subdirectory structure due to the different targeting between posts. Daniel Rika - Dalerio Consulting https://dalerioconsulting.com/ info@dalerioconsulting.com

As long as the URL of the product itself doesn't change (different category references in the URL string) then it's not going to cause any serious harm

Thanks for taking the time to answer. Agreed. It's confusing at best. It confused the heck out of me when I was deconstructing the behaviour. We generally get indexed faster than 2-3 days. Last time I checked the average time to index was around 40 minutes. Guess that's because the engines know our content changes frequently. _1- If the products on your site are selling within minutes, then why are you focusing your attention on how Google will index them?  _Most of our purchasing customers come via Natural Search. 2- As the products sell out within minutes and after so the redirection is stopped, then why would that affect how Google ranks your site?  I should have been clearer: t****he queue will trigger after a threshold is reached, not when product is sold out. But if it's a particularly high demand product, it could sell out before threshold dips below that configured for the queue. Good suggestion about opening queue in a tab.I will explore that option.

Thanks for your input Daniel, much appreciated.

Sometimes branded keywords help a lot in ranking. If you are working for a brand website or any other brand business then try to work for brand keywords as I do for my cornerstone built homes page.