Welcome to the Q&A Forum

"Might sound a bit paranoid, but could Google have done this on purpose to try to make me carry on with adwords?"
Shall we do some research in the name of paranoia.....let's see if anyone can find any high ranking organic sites, that also have adwords ads. Who's up for it?

I assume the dead links can be A. Broken or B. No longer linking to you - It may not mean the site is not linking to you as they may have moved the link to another page etc. just that the exact link that have previously been seen, is no longer.

If the links gave you a rank boost, and are no longer linking to you - yes they could harm your site in terms of rank loss, otherwise I would not worry too much.

"in google webmaster tools we have targeted the shop domain to United States, which may be another factor"

That's your problem right there.

If you tell google that your site is aimed towards the U.S market, you will have to put up with "Unites States" next to your site.

Sorry but there is no way around it, that's google for you.

Probably, yes.

Any restriction you place on the google bot can be seen as sneaky, something like a pop up in instant preview I would not worry too much about, honestly, how much do you use it when you are looking for info or a site?

Not sticking up for them but you have to appreciate the amount of people that would probably try to send them all sorts of viruses anyway they can, also they probably don;t have or want to take the time looking at everyone so closely, basically they will just see if the offending stuff is still there, if it is they won't give you any love.

Honestly, it's probably something so simple you have overlooked it. Keyword ratio's above 6% can be taken as spam depending on content amount, non relevent link coming in/going out, links from already penalzed sites, anything unnatural is now what google has been focusing on, not just backlinks, so go through your site, obviously the HP is the first point to start at, if you are really sure there is nothing going on in the way of spaminess or over optimization, comb through your other pages. It will usually be a problem one your best ranked pages. Or, ex best ranked pages if you have been hit with a penguin slap.

Usually if you have a link on your page it will have anchor text, to place a link to another site behind an inage/ico COULD be seen as a neg signal.

It may not be your intention, but google cares not about your intentions, it does what it wants.

You can always use the nofollow tag if you want to keep the link and are worried it may be effecting your site.

Usually in webmaster tools it will notify you of any issues, have you checked there?

Think about the term you want to rank for the most/get the most traffic for, then have that in the url.

All the best

The tag is usually used to indicate you have duplicate/very similar content on the same site.

So if you have the tag pointing to an offsite site/page it could be the reason you are getting the warning?

It comes down to the quality and seo practises of thier sites.

If they have been spammy with thier link building and you are linking to them, it will not be in your favor to keep a link to them, you could add the nofollow tag though, may help a bit.

Most likely a devaluation of links, or overoptimization........

When google starts playing funny buggers and showing different pages instead, you can almost bet money on it that one or both of the above is the cause.

What was the message?

Just because penguin was rolled out on a specific date does not mean you couldn't get a warning early/later on, They want us to think it was released on the 24th, but was it really.......

You are right too, backlinks certainly need to be cleaned up if they are spammy.

I would think it has to do with the profile being public or not and how popular/used the page is......

Blueprint, as far as I understand it can't really be used to prevent people stealing your content because you need to have to similar versions and place the tag pointing to the one that is of lesser value or that you don't want to come up in place of the original. Or are you saying if you find some of your content elsewhere offsite you can place a canonical link to it, and this will tell the spiders it is your content rather than theres?

Antonio, if you have placed the tag on the newer page pointing to the older page you are telling the spiders that the newer page is the preferred/more original content.

It's a good question. Google blabs non stop about natural links and ranks websites based on links (big part of ranking anyway), however how are those of us that can not get lots of natural BL's compete against those who have obviously bought thousands of links?

Google is very retarded at times as it seems to reward websites doing the wrong thing over the ones who are doing the right things.

When you find out, let me know.

What do you mean exactly by "Both versions of the page"?

And what is the outcome you hope to get from this?

Not much of an seo expert then is he.

For long term rankings they are great indicators, but as Conrel said it still doesn't guarantee anything, you still have to do some leg work.

The most likeey cause is over optimization or similar page content.

If you scroll through the serps for the same keyword that would usually bring up the disappeared page and another of your site pages comes up further down like page 3, 4 or whatever, you can be pretty sure one of those two issues is the cause.

I read sometime ago a good structure is to have every page on the site accesiblie in 3 clicks.

Don't create orphan pages, always have the same link block/menu on every page and you should be ok.

Site structure is only about 10% of the issue.

You need relevant titles/content and links coming into your site to rank well.

Before even getting to the office or getting a coffee emails are checked first with me.

Email junky right here.

P.S LOL Roger, too many night caps will do that to you everytime.