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Hi Roger, I was doing research today on the exact same topic, you might want to see this video from Google's Matt Cutts first http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ets7nHOV1Yo

Most assuredly use different CC-TLDs! I would also point to each from each as you have seen on many global sites. This will allow you to use different keywords also as Europe and the US have different spellings for the same words. So make sure your shopping cart software allows this if you are using the same across all domains. This will help in link building also as it would be harder to get a spanish website linking to an english website even with sub domains.

Making such radical changes is always something that shouldn't be taken lightly, that's for sure.  And if it's done, you'll need to have a spreadsheet where you can enter a column with all the page names, a column with their current URLs, and one with the new URLs, because implementing 301 Redirects is critical but can be a nightmare otherwise. What it comes down to is evaluating the value of other SEO (on-site, link-building, and social) that can be done to improve things as compared with architectural changes.  Judgment calls.  Not always fun.

And along the same lines, there wasn't a rogue line of code that set the canonical URL for all of your products to the home page or added a noindex to your pages, right?

Roger, search the Q&A system for Magento, as there have been a couple of others discussing that software and its merits. Two threads that might be of use are: http://www.seomoz.org/q/what-is-the-most-seo-friendly-ecommerce-cms-platform-available-today http://www.seomoz.org/q/need-advice-re-selecting-an-ecommerce-platform Bozzie311, I agree with Roger totally in that Wordpress and its plugins for ecommerce are often quite inadequate when it comes to an enterprise solution. On Strike Models I run Wordpress and Foxycart, and even with just a few hundred products (with many of them being nearly identical, such as ship plans for different ships) I know I'm outgrowing that solution.

I think I will go with canonical. Just a thought why would I put all the fules in a subdirectory instead of just blocking products.php?printable=Y I guess it would be the same thing I think?

I think the 3rd option is a good one to go with? Just make sure the site.com/store is optimized like a traditional homepage. Since you are not changing domains I don't think redirecting all pages in option 1 is worth it like you said. Option 2 is good because you can really control the page, its layouts, and text/links for super optimization but the work will double because it is not linked with your CMS. If I were you I'd probably choose #3

Ok so I am trying to figure out the best way to add 50,000 links to the robots.txt file and future proof it so we dont have to keep adding manually to the file whenever a new product is added. I am not all that familar with x-cart. Here is how the urls i want to block are formated... website.com/store/product.php?mode=add_vote&productid=XXXXXX&vote=100" Would adding "Disallow: /product.php" work? Or should I "Disallow: /product.php?mode=add_vote&productid" <---will that work? Would this have any consequences I am not thinking of?

The website is not severely penalized as it still ranks for its domain name - http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=1239&bih=869&q=discoverhookah&aq=f&aqi=g-s1g-v1g-sv4&aql=&oq= It wouldn't do that, if it had a filter penalty or was deindexed. The home page doesn't have any text on it besides text link. The sub pages are super poorly optimized. So no, I don't think it has a penalty. It just needs some SEO love.