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Hi,

At the bottom of the knowledge graph there is a small link (Feedback) where you can indicate a problem with the data displayed. Did you already report the wrong birth date this way. There is also a link to the legal form - but I understand from your question you already tried that.

Google is pulling the information from different sources - you could try to make sure that enough reliable sources have the correct birth date (for actresses I would think about IMDb). If multiple sources have the correct date - I guess the problem will more or less solve itself.

Hope this helps,

Dirk

Hi,

You might want to read this article on faceted navigation on the google webmaster blog which gives some good advice on how to handle the situation. What to use depends a bit on your actual situation.
Options include using a nofollow links / use a separate subdomain or block in robots.txt (using a separate folder).

On Moz there is this article (the part of faceting) - its mainly about listing sites - but the core problem is more or less similar.

Hope this helps,

Dirk

Hi,

Did something similar in the past - although the timeframe was a bit different (at least 5 years between the alpha & gamma version) - we also skipped step 2 as at the moment we migrated to the gamma version we didn't know the url's of the alpha version anymore.

Changing url's is always a risky business from a SEO perspective and I hope you're certain that you will stick to the gamma version for the next couple of years.

To reply to your question - the method you propose looks good and is probably the best way to migrate the url's. I would advice to check & double check the 301's. Put the new structure on a test server (mytestdomain.com or on a subdomain like test.mydomain.com - block it for indexing). Activate the redirects on the test server. Use Screaming Frog (in list mode) with both the alpha & beta url's to check that these are properly redirected (you will need to update the url lists and replace the current domain by test.mydomain.com or mytestdomain.com for test purposes).

Also check do a full crawl on the test server (in crawl mode) to see that all the internal links have been updated (there shouldn't be any internal 301).

If this is ok - you can put the redirects & the new url structure on the production server. Doublecheck again with Screaming Frog to make sure that everything is ok (same tests as above put on the production environment. Monitor both Webmastertools and Analytics (make sure you can identify your 404 page in Analytics) to see if the number of 404 increases. If so, check the causes & correct them asap.

If tested like this, normally you shouldn't have a SEO impact.

Hope this helps,

Dirk

Hi Jacob,

My point was that if the Moz crawler find duplicate content it has to be on your site - the Moz crawler is only crawling your site - not the social media. It may well be that you also have duplicate content issues across sites because you post on social media as well but the Moz crawler is completely unaware of that. The original advices remains valid - check which pages Moz considers to be duplicates and act accordingly.

rgds,

Dirk

Hi,

If the Moz crawler is finding duplicate content it implies that there is duplicate content on your site, not duplicate content on social media.

You can download the csv in the crawl report (or click the + icon) to see which pages Moz considers to be duplicates. Comparing the pages can help you find a solution (like a canonical url, or a 301 redirect, ...)

Hope this helps,

Dirk

Hi,

From what I read it looks similar to these cases - https://moz.com/community/q/getting-different-search-queries-in-google-webmaster & http://moz.com/community/q/chinese-site-ranking-for-our-brand-name-possible-hack

In these cases - sites where hacked using a vulnerability in a Wordpress slider - they copied sites they wanted to target on to some of the hacked domains and used other hacked domains to point links to them. At that point they were trying to redirect traffic from genuine e-commerce sites to bogus ones.

You could try to contact the site owners & tell them they have been hacked. At the same time file a complaint @Google 

rgds,

Dirk

For Google there is no preference for upper or lower case - so the proposed change will bring you no benefit. Even if the migration risk is very small, if you are close to your most important sales period - don't do it.

Dirk

Without the actual url it's difficult to give a very precise answer. You could check if your 404 page exist (check the status of the 404 page in http & https using web-sniffer.net). You could check if it's the correct 404 that is shown  (just type yourdomain.com/jfjkldgjlkfdj or something like that & see where it brings you) - if not - probably there is something wrong with your config;

rgds,

Dirk

Hi Sander

Redirecting based on ip address can be quite tricky. If you would redirect US visitors based on ip address to the US site rather than the corporate site you risk that you will redirect the main Googlebot (who is crawling your site with a Californian ip) to the US site as well. You could exclude the Google ip's from the redirection - but that would be against the Google Guidelines (check http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.be/2008/06/how-google-defines-ip-delivery.html : "Googlebot should see the same content a typical user from the same IP address would see.")

You could consider to use the ip detection to show a message to US visitors - inviting them to visit the US site rather than the corporate one. This way you give the choice to the user - continue the visit on the corporate site or going to the dedicated US version (which is probably better in terms of usability as well - personally I always find it annoying when a site redirects me somewhere based on my location). For frequent visitors you could store their choice in a cookie & redirect them automatically if the cookie is set for this particular visitor)

Hope this helps,

Dirk

To be honest - if it is only putting one letter in capitals most of your customers/visitors will hardly notice. If this is the only change - it will not make a difference in terms of usability.

Google changed it logo recently and there was a big buzz about it. When I asked at home - nobody had even noticed the change (4 frequent Google users).

Dirk

It shouldn't- most people search in small caps anyway and Google doesn't seem to take capitals into account.

Dirk

410 & 404's are treated almost the same way by bots (the 410 just gives a stronger indication that the page is gone forever) - check this article http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-explains-differences-404-410-status-codes-189060 - so a 410 is also a valable option. As most sites already have a custom 404 page I guess the 404 solution is the easiest one;

I forgot to mention in my first reply - but there is also a good article on out-of-stock products on Moz: https://moz.com/blog/how-should-you-handle-expired-content

Dirk

It's nothing to worry about - they will disappear after a while (if you don't link to them on your site). It's quite normal to have them & they have no SEO impact (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2409439?hl=en)

You could check this advice from Matt Cuts here: http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2334932/ecommerce-seo-tips-for-unavailable-products-from-googles-matt-cutts- for larger sites he advices to use the "unavailable after" metatag (http://googleblog.blogspot.nl/2007/07/robots-exclusion-protocol-now-with-even.html)

Dirk

The way you structure the url has no impact on SEO performance (unless the url becomes very long & unreadable).

The depth of a site has an impact (how many clicks do I need from the homepage to get to a page) but this is completely unrelated to the folder structure. A good article on why it's good to have a certain structure in your url can be found here: http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/structured-urls/

As changing URL's always carries a risk & doesn't bring SEO benefit I wouldn't change them just for the sake of changing them.

Dirk

While I agree with the concept of Danny's answer (the farther content is from the root the lower the possibility of ranking) - there is no relationship between the depth of an article & the structure of the url.

To put it extreme - a url like mydomain.com/folder/subfolder/subsubfolder/page could be at 1 click from the homepage & a url like mydomain.com/page could be at 5 clicks from the homepage.

I would migrate to the structure you propose:domain.com/blog/post.htm, mainly because it's easier for reporting purposes. You can find an interesting article from Bruce Clay here on why it's good to have a well structured url: http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/structured-urls/

rgds,

Dirk

For the url's - my advice would be: if it ain't broken - don't fix it. While static url's may be the best situation - Google is quite capable to analyse the parameters in the url.

You could fix the url's & put 301 from the old to the new - but if the products rank well on the current url I wouldn't touch them. Check also this old post on webmaster central : http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.nl/2008/09/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls.html

While the main topic is unrelated to your question - this article http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.nl/2014/02/faceted-navigation-best-and-5-of-worst.html also gives you insight on how Google deals with parameters in the url.

Hope this helps,

Dirk

If you have the list of url's you want to check  in csv you could use Screaming Frog: put the string in a  custom filter & crawl the urls based on the list. Applying the filter will only include the url's that contain the string in the source code.

rgds,

Dirk

Hi,

How did you notice the drop in rankings - is this info coming from webmaster tools or some external tracking system? I just search for the keyword shutters (google.be/ from Brussels) and your site is still ranked in 3rd position (Dutch) - 1st position FR.

Did you see a significant drop in traffic to these pages in Analytics?

By the way - not sure if shutters is the best word to describe the product you are selling (French version) - the word "volets intérieurs" seems to be a better word.

Probably not related to the current issues - but you might want to check the size of the images on your homepage (and speed optimisation in general: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/150922_6W_RT4/1/details/) - also check pagespeed insights from Google.

Please also take into account that with the current organisation of your content you push the FR version 1 level deeper than the NL content.

You also might want to take a look at the internal redirects on your site - you redirect all url's to have the trailing slash which is ok - but you should also update your internal links accordingly.

rgds,

Dirk

Hi Dan,

You already got an excellent reply to this question from Andy

Dirk

If I understand it well it will be something like directory.com/listing.htm links to directory.com/companypage which is then redirected to www.company.com (so users actually never see directory.com/companypage).

I guess this type of link will be considered as a "follow" type link as server side redirects pass link juice to the destination (unless they block directory.com/companypage for indexing with their robots.txt and/or they put a nofollow on all the links to directory.com/companypage)

Dirk