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I've usually seen it in cases like what Istvan mentioned - somehow, another signal comes into play. Maybe it's new links to the non-canonical URLs, maybe some internal pages with old links get crawled, maybe a new 301 or canonical comes into play that conflicts with the existing canonical. If they're being ignore now, then it's possible you're using the canonical tag as a band-aid, for lack of a better term, and the underlying problem that caused the duplicates is still in play. If Google's really being indecisive, you may want to take a closer look at that underlying problem and not just rely on canonicals. Generally, the tag is pretty strong, but Google does get it wrong from time to time. Sorry, it's hard to advise based on generalities. The devil is in the details on these situations, I find.

I too have seen this behavior, and don't know of a one-fits-all solution. Personally I'd start examining things with the specific URL. Do other results in those SERPs have stars? -Dan

15% is in the original algorithm, it may have changed but I doubt if much, if you read the algorithm its a pretty well thought out figure of decay. I have seen the video and it is not very clear at all, maybe on purpose. What he says is that a 301 loses as much PR as a link, I agree. all requests lose 15%, You can't have a 301 without first going though a link. I think where people are getting confused is they think a 301 replaces a link request, it dose not, it is an extra request. If you read the comments of the video and much discussion around the web you will see what I mean.

Marty, thanks for mentioning Screaming Frog. I actually love it. I usually have it running pretty much every day, doing something or the other. It however does not give an easy way to identify the outgoing links for the website I am crawling. Is there a specific setting I am unaware of ?

I would agree 100%. I can't see it being a problem if you are using your brand, you should be able to get credit (and traffic) for your work.

School boy error! We've found the problem... Turns out there was a div tag that had not been closed which didn't agree with Google's webcache!! Note to anyone that has the same problem - validate your HTML!

Thanks Joanna, I think I'll request a few Demos to see how they defer! Would love to see your post about this!

Thanks for the reply Alan. Yeah, that does make sense. I'll see how it plays out and I'll write a YouMOZ post later in the year.

If they're really just low quality (spun articles, blog comments, etc.), then I agree with Casey. You can cause more trouble taking a machete to your links - move forward with stronger, better links, and the past will probably be forgiven. My only caveat is that if these links appear to be paid or farmed, I might be a bit more aggressive with removing some of them.

Yeah I suppose this question is now quite academic since G+ has launched search plus your world.

Everything I have seen points to a sitewide dampening effect. A big change with Panda is that poor quality pages on your site can drag down the entire site, which is why some SEOs are advising that you get rid of the low quality or duplicate content. Hubpages tried to get around the sitewide effect by moving pages to a subdomain which Google usually considers separate from the main site.

Did you add any links to that particular page?  I have seen a handful of links with similar anchor text published at the same time kill a ranking.

thanks guys - pretty standard stuff then.

I agree with EGOL, a new hosting option may be best. But if cost is the issue then user-experience is the most important. Server locations may effect SEO, but conversion rate is more important for your business, therefore high bounce rates because of slow load speeds will have an adverse effect.

Hi Elias! Unfortunately, we don't have rank tracking in Google mobile and I'm not sure of any other company that does.  I'll pass the message along to our team, though, and we'll see what we can do to add that functionality down the line. Also, did you know we have a feature request forum? It's a great place to share your ideas. Other people can vote on them and it will help us determine priorities. You should check it out: http://seomoz.zendesk.com/forums Thanks again for letting us know!

Having multiple h1 tags throughout the website is fine but having repetitive h1 on a single page dilutes the importance of h1 tags. There is no penalty for such usage because in doing so, the person himself dilutes its importance.

I have few concerns about mobile seo. Pls have a look at here - http://www.seomoz.org/q/want-to-target-mobile-site-for-google-mobile-version-and-desktop-site-for-google-desktop-version Can I have any response here?