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On the big question, I definitely agree with Gary - Penguin can cause an algorithmic penalty, and that can impact your entire site. It's definitely not something to mess around with. Google devalues links all the time, but that's separate from Penguin. When Penguin 1.0 launched, Google made it clear the update was punitive. As for when Penguin runs, we're really not clear on that. Penguin data seems to be updated outside of the real-time algorithm, but it's tough to say whether that only happens during an official Penguin update or if the data is updated more frequently. My gut feeling (based partially on the few Penguin recovery stories out there) is that it has to be a bit more frequent than the confirmed updates, but it's certainly irregular. I don't think every six months is accurate, honestly. Recovery is tricky - since Penguin is algorithmic, reconsideration shouldn't help in theory, but the reality is a bit more murky. Penguin does need to refresh, and the links do need to be re-crawled - Gary is certainly right about that. Those timelines can be highly variable, though.

Hi Rahul! I recently answer a very similar question. Lynn Patchett comment was extremely helpful as well. Check it out: http://moz.com/community/q/are-reciprocal-links-with-a-pandalized-site-harmful Hope it helps.

I am not sure that "sandboxing" is an appropriate word at this time. If google takes a manual action against your site they notify you in webmaster tools. If the problem with your site is detected by algorithm, they simply demote your site. I honestly think that you need experienced professional help with this.

If you have a specific design in mind, you could just create a new page layout in WordPress that doesn't include menus or navigation. Then you'd just create a page using that page layout whenever you need a landing page.

Even setting your location and cleaning your cache will not show the same results from a person that is actually in that location. Google uses SEVERAL factors, including ip addresses. I would suggest you open an incognito window / private window and then use a proxy/VPN provider to set your IP address as from that location, for example HMA (paid, but cheap). Hope that helps.

Rand recently made a Whiteboard Friday video about this... http://moz.com/blog/why-you-might-be-losing-rankings-to-pages-with-fewer-links-worse-targeting-and-poor-content

Thanks Ruhul "Some areas don't pop 7 packs at all for the same keywords." I think it's mainly based on search volume. I can give you lots of examples but here's a good one. I was consulting for an SEO I trained that was working for a roofing client. I told him he was wasting one of the Places categories because that key phrase didn't even pull a pack. He said "I learned well from your training and I KNOW I checked to be sure it pulled a pack! Turns out that was 3 months ago when he set up the listing. Also turns out that was the rainy season. So in that small town there were enough searches for that type of roof repair, but when the rain stopped that search volume dried up too! So if your KWs are a little nichey for local OR competition is low OR you are dealing with fairly small towns, that could be why. A good KW to test with is Sedation Dentistry, in larger cities it will pull a pack. In some smaller ones  - no pack. Re: my AOL trick.  Did you see Dr. Pete's post today? http://moz.com/blog/how-does-google-count-local-results I think my AOL trick is easier and I like StartPage even better for some things. But he found a way to pull pure organic with a Google search parameter - which is pretty cool. I need to find time to test and compare with my method this weekend but I think it's pulling the same results for all 3.

we have done well in both but recently after we had our site updated to a new site, we have done much better in Bing than in google as well as yahoo.

Hi Rahul, Good question! Of course, there is nothing actually 'illegal' about duplicate or thin content...it is simply unwise. I can completely understand the frustration with this when you see competitors employing a dumb tactic like the one you've described (creating tons of thin, duplicate pages and simply changing out the city name on each one) and managing to rank well in Google for it. I've seen lots of examples like that over the years, too. Often, these pages are old and have unfairly accrued 'trust' in Google because of that. They totally don't deserve to rank, but even despite Google's duplicate content penalties, they are. So, you are faced with a temptation to follow their example. You've seen those old cartoons where the character has a little angel and a little devil on either shoulder. What your competitors are doing represents that little devil. I'll take the role of angel here in hopes of helping you to see why you shouldn't go with the devil Your competitors are showing every human being who visits their website that they are happy with making the least possible effort. If they make the least possible effort for their own business, just think of what a poor effort they must make for their clients' websites. I certainly wouldn't want to hire such a lazy, uncreative web design team. Would you? Your competitors are sitting ducks for a duplicate content penalty from Google. Even if they are getting away with this today, tomorrow could be the day Google hammers down on them or an algo change makes all of that stuff on their website invisible for good. I certainly wouldn't want that kind of constant threat of disaster hanging over my head. Would you? Your competitors are providing a very poor user experience for their website's human visitors. Instead of trying to be helpful and share what they know about designing websites in Boston or Atlanta or San Francisco, they are simply trying to manipulate people. Every page on a website represents an opportunity to educate, to inspire, to engage. Not only are your competitors being manipulative, they are missing a massive opportunity to build relationships with potential customers. This is a huge loss! Your competitors are teaching all of their colleagues that they have no standards of excellence. In the Internet Marketing industry, lots of pros refer clients to colleagues whom they trust. For example, my firm doesn't do citation cleanup. I have a colleague who does and am happy to refer incoming clients to him because he has proven to me that he has very high standards. His website, blog and track record on the web prove his authority and dedication to excellence. There is absolutely no way I would refer a client to a web design firm whose website was littered with duplicate doorway pages. So, there is more lost opportunity. I hope these few examples are starting to build a clear picture in your mind of how failure to take the high road can harm your business in a variety of ways. I recommend that you shake your head at what your competitors are doing and resolve that you will leave them in the dust by building awesome, unique, useful, inspiring pages and utilize your very best SEO skills to help those pages to rank well. Building your business on the web calls for maximum effort and maximum creativity - not minimum effort. Get fired up and do this right! It will serve you well in the long haul.

To make my self clear "xyz.com " is your domain name Site Wide non relevant Footer links have a bad rap so any anchor text keyword used bedsides your domain name may one day get penalized . You still gain by having the link and the text near it does use keywords so not a total loss. But then again this is just a safe approach......

Wow, good to know. I assume  Incognito browsing with chrome is the same deal?

The good news is that a lot of our rankings have stabilized somewhat, and we are doing better than expected. We need to build more content and backlinks, but we have a decent foundation. When can you feel relatively (in SEO safe is extremely relative) safe that your rankings have settled? Any indications?

Hi Rahul, Miriam has provided you with some great feedback. Did she answer your question?

Here is an article by Mark Traphagen: Google+ Profile PageRank: The Real AuthorRank? - SMX Advanced 2013 in which he mentions G+ pages in the SERPs. The Google+ Fitness and Nutrition community was apparently ranking on the first page for "fitness and nutrition", though this week they are on page two. Perhaps we will be seeing more of this.

Thanks to all. Built one page for all, and we are on the first page for all - and then some. We also got some lesser variations ranked as well. Spot on advice.

1. by authority, local citations, reviews, frequent updates, interaction as a brand (posting and interacting as the brand itself on Google +). 2. I've seen 7 and i've seen less I think it depends on the search query and device, mobile vs. pc etc... 3. Can you share a link? 4. No, because if you check the map it will show more results. Perhaps Google does not think others deserve to be there.

I wouldn't worry about using it verbatim to be quite honest. Write a good piece of content about IT support in New York State or New York City, make interesting, informative, and perhaps use "IT Support NY" as your title tag and call it a day. That's my two cents Dana

From what my dedicated AdWords rep tells me, Quality Score is PRIMARILY based on CTR...however there is a small weight to text ad and landing page relevancy.  My rep has told me that if my landing page meta title, H1 & content use the keyword, then the landing page will have a good relevancy rating....beyond this, don't worry about it. I've asked him several questions about improving On Page SEO items to improve my Quality Score.  He told me to focus on CTR, since this is primarily what determines Quality Score. I recommend optimizing your text ads to increase CTR, which will result in a high Quality Score....use the keyword in your text ad headline, line 1 or 2 ad copy, and the display url.  I also recommend using dynamic keyword insertion...preferably in headline. Also go through your search query reports, identify keywords that generated lots impressions & low clicks, and add these keywords as a negative keywords.  This will increase CTR & Quality Score...especially for your broad match keywords. You can even go a step further in your campaigns to ensure high quality score... Stop using broad match...just use exact, phrase, & broad modified match type for every keyword. Also remember that Quality Score is a long term metric, Google is looking at the CTR for the week, month & year...so don't expect changes you make today to impact your Quality Score tomorrow.

Hi Rahul, I'll be curious to hear what others think about this. My reaction is that there is zero benefit to looking exclusively at a link on your site from an SEO/link-juice perspective. Taking that approach is going to get you into trouble. The reason I say that is any link that falls in the category of "I have this link for SEO purposes!" and any tricks used to make links unique (like using hash tags or query strings) for link juice purposes, will probably be ignored or penalized by Google. If it isn't ignored or penalized today, chances are it will be in the future as Google moves more in the direction of quality-related metrics. Any link that is not put in specifically for great UX really isn't worth having from any perspective, including link-juice/SEO perspectives. In regards to your other question, you would put your primary links in the top navigation and the body text because that is what users expect. If all of my users want to see my "Cool New Widgets" page, then I better have that link in the navigation. I probably should have that in the body of the page as well and maybe even in the footer. Will all those locations pass link juice? Probably not. But what is my main concern? Getting link juice or getting customers to the right page? I'll err on the side of getting customers to my page and having less than perfect link juice optimization because, in general, that is going to have bigger SEO wins. So, that is my two cents anyway. I'll be curious to see other replies about this question. Matthew

Hi Rahul, The answer is with nofollow attributes. You will still maintain your human organization, while telling the Google bot what content is important and where to go. Hope that helps.