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Google can tell they're the same image, and even lets you use this as a search. Go to images.google.com and click on the little image icon right by the search. Instead of putting in words describing the image, you can upload an image or point to an image URL and Google will tell you if it finds that image (or a very similar image) on any other pages. That's also a great way to find out if other sites are using your images. I found two other sites using an image from my site, for example. Here's the search results http://bit.ly/MtrXbs

Yes, this would be a good way for webmasters to confess that they have purchased links and turn off their value.   If that is what Bing wanted this tool to be used for they should say that explicitly. Instead they say..... Use the Disavow Links tool to submit page, directory, or domain URLs that may contain links to your site that seem "unnatural" or appear to be from spam or low quality sites. .... which has a very different meaning to me. Bing is full of BS. They can't do their job on links and they can't communicate.

Hey Alan - Great question here. I honestly do not know if that htaccess trick will work. I've heard it postulated that it will, but have not seen anything conclusive on it! Unfortunately reinclusion requests take some time. If you think that you have been targeted unfairly, I'd recommend making as much noise publicly as possible. Get in front of Google and plead your case. As far as I see it, here are your options for the spammy links - If it's a KEYWORD-SPECIFIC penalty to that page, 404 the page to disavow the links and build a new page on your domain targeting that term. Build good links to this. If it's a sitewide drop in traffic, then you need to remove as many of the links as possible. There are tools out there to help with this, but generally you need to find low-PA/DA, exact anchors. These are going to be the ones that are hurting you most. Also look for sitewides with exact anchors that can be seen as manipulative. Google wants to see "good faith" in getting links removed. So document all sites that you contact, the sites that get back to you, the links you get removed, and the links you know about that you have not been able to get removed, including reasons for why (ie 4 emails sent, no reply, cannot find an email on WhoIs, etc). You have to be completely transparent. One tip for you is to share all of these links in a Google Doc, which you link to from the reinclusion request. Then, shorten the link within the reinclusion using a bit.ly link so that you can see if/when they look at the links. Good luck man. I know how hard it is to wait on hearing back, having gone through it a few times myself. John

I have to say that the word whinger is most commonly used in the term, "a whinging pome". In regards to immigrants from the UK constantly telling us, its not like that back home. Probabaly a unfair sterotype, but i am sure has a few simular about us.

bob just to let you know, i re-did the reviews using actual reviews on page, just 2 of them and i have the starts back.

It's there larger effort towards updating their algorithm based on sematic search - http://searchengineland.com/wsj-says-big-google-search-changes-coming-reality-check-time-115227 Next gen of search will arrive within a year.

Hello Alan, If they are only doing this for Google then it is indeed cloaking, regardless of their intent. That may or may not land them in hot water, but I think Google has provided plenty of other ways to handle this situation. First and foremost, it would be best if those session IDs and certain other parameters were put into a cookie instead of the URL. As you probably know, you can tell Google and Bing how to handle the different parameters with their free webmaster tools so it would seem to me like that would be the best approach if you cannot get rid of the parameters all-together. You can also put a rel canonical tag in the header that references the version of the URL without the parameters. Force redirecting Googlebot is not a good idea. If, for instance, you wanted to force redirect by IP - as is the case with many global sites that have geo-specific landing pages - then that would be fine as long as you aren't making any special exceptions for Googlebot. Did this answer your question? Good luck! Everett

Sure will

I am a VB man, my algorithm if url.location.equals(url.relCanonical)  then leakJuice = 0.15 end if I say this because of what Duane Forrester said that it assigns its value to itself, all hops leak juice or link juice or it would flow in internal loops, there has to be some decay, From what he is saying i get the idea it is a link to itself, and would leak. If you use the Bing SEO Toolkit, it shows you the inlinks, i noticed that there was a link with no link text, i found that this was the canonical tag. it could be that it assignes value to itself again? I have removed them from one of my sites and i will see if a get some movement, once i get these ideas in my head i have to find out

Yes i will get rid of them, nothing much worth while. a bunch of forgotten ideas and experiments

Well you want to see them as they are considered for ranking. If for ranking a subdomain link is considered an internal link then yes, thats how WMT should report it.

Thanks for providing the discovery Alan - good reminder that it can be the seemingly little things that bring us down!

Thanks, i have already done this. I wanted to keep my ranking history, but i will do without it Thanks for your research

Hi Alan, Since the subdomains are captured within the root domain, all subdomains will always be seen within the root domain unless they are successfully blocked. As I understand it, Google's view of the world is that every specific account created in Webmaster Tools is a separate site. Hope that helps, Sha

Hi Alan, So sorry you're seeing problems. Could you please send an email to help@seomoz.org? They'll best be able to help you out in this, and would want to know any problems so it can be fixed.

I simply put a 301 for the domain name, and kept the site the same in place on the same server. I did not use change of address.

I agree link count is not the end all, but when Gianluca said I had only a few links the focus was on that, where I don’t think that is the case and wanted the focus back off that. To say that he had a point would also go against the statement the number of links not being important rather the quality. OSE explorer I found never has many links for new campaigns, and only having 5 campaign slots, I did not have it loaded until a few days ago. I believe it finds the pages relevant to the campaigns, that my understanding based of observation only, I expect to see more next crawl . But I don’t think links is the problem. As I stated I was number one for my company name, now I came no where, with the same or less links. As for Bing and Google not having a correlation I disagree, they do correlate very well, it’s not a rule, but if you rank well in one you will rank well in the other. I have always seemed to rank better with sites in Bing than Google, but generally if I make progress in one I make progress in the other. To say the comparison is completely worthless does not hold water Look at all the factors I have mentioned and I think, there is something wrong, take my point about my company name, I Used to rank number one, now I don’t rank at all. I made a site thatsitsolutions.net.au, with no links only a few days old, ranks number 4. Imagine you search for a query, how to make pumpkin pie, you would expect some page with that exact phrase to be more important than a page that just happens to have those words in the content. This is what how search engines work, they work on meaning and relevance, not just matching words. If I was looking for a local Perth web developer I would expect the exact phrase to rank higher then a page with the words spread throughout the page. As for the being my site, I have many sites and built and promoted many more, I am not sentimental about my site, I am concerned that it has dropped out of the rankings to last place. I have mentioned that I don’t even rank for my company name where I had been number one for years, that is not normal. That and all the other points I think I have a very good case for being concerned. I hope that it’s just a temp problem, that’s all I can say. As for actions I can take, I think the best action I can take is try to work out why my rankings have dropped, I really don’t think that doing a bit of link building is the answer. If you have any specific action items that can explain the drop then I’m all ears, but I am not asking for SEO help, I have done very well in SEO besides this problem.

Thanks

Hi Alan Really sorry to hear that I set up all my clients on different accounts so as to minimise risk of this type of thing. What you could try (perhaps for a less important GooglePlace / client). Set up a new ID and then go in via a search on GooglePlaces and see if you can take over the listing. Worth a try perhaps.

there are some rumors they gonna effect the QS in adwords also.