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Just to add a bit to the discussion if you did not see this already: http://moz.com/blog/early-look-at-googles-june-25-algo-update

Don't think the space makes any difference. Take a look at this old article from google: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2007/03/using-robots-meta-tag.html "If you have multiple content values, you must place a comma between them, but it doesn't matter if you also include spaces. So the following meta tags are interpreted the same way: "

Hi, Well it depends on the cms you are using, but most cms systems have the ability to spawn duplicate content through (for example) products in multiple categories with different urls, things like links to print versions of the page, wordpress can do it through archive pages, these kind of things. If you start looking at the referring pages in the right hand column you might well see a pattern emerging in regards how these duplicate pages are being linked to. This pattern is what I mean by systemic fault, not a fault as such but simply a part of the system's functionality that is creating this issue. The good news is these kinds of things are usually pretty easy to identify and fix either through altering the cms settings or else tinkering a bit in the code, and once you have done it, all related dup content issues are solved at the same time. Hope that makes sense!

Generally speaking, Google will put whatever they think is the most appropriate in the SERPs for your title.  It is annoying but the are doing it to "help" the user experience. Mark is on the right track with what he is suggesting.  We had a similar issue for a group of pages on our site.  Google was showing the URL slug vs the title we had put in - that was annoying!   We just tweaked the title a bit as it was already within the normal "parameters" of what people suggest as best practices. I think the update of tags make G take another look and our tags were updated an shown appropriately within a few weeks. It is almost like your old TVs or radios, you need to "kick em" to get them to reset and work.  That seemed to help in this case with us and title tags and SERPs on G. Cheers!

Twitter used to help a new site get indexed by Google a little faster, I don't think that it makes much of a difference now. Pinterest links can show up as follow links, and a lot businesses use them to showcase products and link directly back to a product page for conversion. That's better than SEO frankly. Closing the loop for a quicker transaction. I agree that you should focus on using these channels for the value they provide on their own, not for trying to game a particular search. I do think that there is value in SEO for creating these profiles, branded search is still important and it's always good to create potential SERP results for you brand.

Thanks Lynn!

Hi Ben, The answer to your question boils down to usability and link equity: Usability: Did the old URLs get lots of Direct and Referring traffic?  E.g., do people have them bookmarked, type them directly into the address bar, or follow links from other sites?  If so, there's an argument to be made for 301 redirecting the old URLs to their equivalent, new URLs.  That makes for a much more seamless user experience, and increases the odds that visitors from these traffic sources will become customers, continue to be customers, etc. Link equity: When you look at a Top Pages report (in Google Webmaster Tools, Open Site Explorer, or ahrefs), how many of those most-linked and / or best-ranking pages are old product URLs?  If product URLs are showing up in these reports, they definitely require a 301 redirect to an equivalent, new URL so that link equity isn't lost. However, if (as is common with a large number of ecommerce sites), your old product URLs got virtually zero Direct or Referring traffic, and had virtually zero deep links, then letting the URLs go 404 is just fine.  I think I remember a link churn report in the early days of LinkScape when they reported that something on the order of 80% of the URLs they had discovered would be 404 within a year.  URL churn is a part of the web. If you decide not to 301 those old URLs, then you simply want to serve a really consistent signal to engines that they're gone, and not coming back.  Recently, JohnMu from Google suggested recently that there's a tiny difference in how Google treats 404 versus 410 response codes - 404s are often re-crawled (which leads to those 404 error reports in GWT), whereas 410 is treated as a more "permanent" indicator that the URL is gone for good, so 410s are removed from the index a tiny bit faster.  Read more: http://www.seroundtable.com/google-content-removal-16851.html Hope that helps!

Thanks for that - I think what I am trying to do is somehow cut the linkjuice dilution - my DA is weak and the mega menu contains around 150 links with all the cats / subcats... so my link juice is diluted all over the place. We have 1750 products but only 50 hits per day - Any suggestions? www.eHYPHENcocinasplusDOTcom. Thanks

http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank_calculator.php

How badly 'damaged' do you believe your domain to be? I mean, changing a domain name can be an issue depending on how much branding and money you've put into it. But, on the same breath, you could say it's easier to cut your losses and if you have a strategic plan of action, then it could be a better option to start again a new. What's your domain name, out of interest? Feel free to PM Me. Tom

If you just want the language covered Mark's hreflang, coupled with a subdomain or subdirectory, is the way to go. I tend to lean subdirectory in that case but I've not heard anyone make a slam dunk case for either.

Thanks Takeshi. I recently filed a Google reconsideration request, came back saying there was nothing wrong, e.g, no manual penalty - but if Panda has penalised us for thin/dupe content, we wouldnt know by the manual route... In this scenario, is it worth just starting from scratch? Or do we wait till the next Panda update which could be who knows when? Cheers

This is the robots file line: Disallow: /index.php/ Now, Magento has custom URL rewriting - so no URL uses index.php although this is the file that is used to run the system itself. Should I unblock it?

Presumably submitting an english content based site is pretty pointless?

Hello BJS, The parameters look OK. Keep in mind that adjusting parameter handling in GWT is more of a band-aid than a cure. There are lots of other ways to handle faceted navigation, including rel canonical, robots meta tags, robots.txt and others. Read this article if you haven't already: http://moz.com/blog/building-faceted-navigation-that-doesnt-suck And here's a Whiteboard Friday on the topic: "http://moz.com/blog/whiteboard-friday-faceted-navigation Keep a close eye on rankings once you've implemented those parameter handling rules. Be sure to annotate your analytics account with the date on which this was done for possible future diagnostics. See: http://www.google.com/analytics/features/annotations.html

Are you still linking to those pages? If so, I would just keep the noindex,follow meta in the header. That way you still benefit from the link juice flowing to these pages, link juice that would be lost if you just blocked them from being crawled via robots.

I agree with Chris. In the specific example of coffeemakers, I would run a simple usability test (i.e. via http://www.usertesting.com). Have your visitors shop both ways and see which they prefer. Personally, for things like coffeemakers or even clothing, I have an expectation that if other colors are available I am going to be able to select that color from one drop down menu on a core product page Chris's point about potential cannibalization issues is a very good one too. Hope that helps!

I think it might be possible to get penalty from bolding. I started to appear/disappear yesterday with my both main keywords on homepage. It kept doing that every few mins until today, disappeared and not any signals to come back. Both keywords was bolded in the first paragraph. Keyword density is ok. My backlink anchors are fine and i don't think it is because of them. Still, made some moves and changed exact match keywords to my domain/url ones on some websites. Homepage is still ranking for its other keywords, where is also those main keywords inlcuded as a long tail ones. So everything else seems to be good at the moment. I wonder if i manage to come back soon.. Any thought?

Your DA and PA are weak so if I were you I would be selective on what your target. Do some research on keywords you would like to rank for and see what the competition is like for that keyword in the serps and if you have a hope to rank ( you might want to start on mid-long term keywords). You can also see what pages your currently rank for (page 2 or 3) and if a little improvement with the PA would it get to the front page, then you will know if it worth having a site wide link (via the Nav) to get the max PA to that page from your own site. But don't for get the people have to use the site so it might not be possible to have every link on the nav to be a landing page.