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YouTube is doing some form of foot printing on files looking for duplicate content (video/audio).

If you need to reuse a video, you will need do something to each copy of the video to make it unique. Is there a specific percent difference that they are looking for to have changed?, yes probably, but I wouldn't suggest focus on that. Instead, change something on each video that will both modify the video, and help better inform users.For example, modifying the opening and closing titles of the video to better match the specific circumstance under which you are reusing that video. On a side note, there is good info on adding captions and subtitles here: http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=100077

Like Theo said, I would start with Webmaster Tools ( Links to your site > All domains area ), if they are in there, Google knows about them, and if they have any value to pass though that link, they are passing it.

One other quick note, if you know those pages you are getting links from are all index and follow pages, you may want to just double check to see if they have been indexed ( Google search for site:www.the-exact-domain.com/and-page-url.html ), if you get no results back, then you know those pages are not in the index (not found yet, or otherwise dropped).

On the OSE thing, if I am remembering this correctly Rand said something about how they were focusing the crawl, pulling in less low quality sites - could it be that the domains you are getting links from are low quality?

Brian

Sounds to me like you could give each product it's own URL for that purpose, then to avoid the duplicate content issue just rel=canonical those pages back to the page where they actualy live.

I haven't had to do this yet myself though, so I'm sure someone will jump in and say for sure

Brian

I like App dev (I learned a bit of objective C to write my own iPhone apps), but one thing you learn very quickly in that space is that many have come before you, and this becomes more true every day. Simply making another "me too" app won't cut it. However, if you have something of value to offer your audience, something that requires (or would benefit) the native hooks that app development provides to you, than I would say (budget permitting), yea go for it. With Apples change in policy on what can generate an app, there may even be cheaper options avilable.

Here is how we handle mobile: Check site stats, and if combined they don't total more % wise then the cut-off for traditional browser testing in general (5%, 10%, etc.), then treat mobile like you would any sub-threshold browser... that is, keep it in mind, test if you have the opportunity, but don't waste resources on it (caveat here obviously being a site that targets mobile, but if that were the case something tells me there would be a desk drawer full of devices to test with already). That being said, the mobile hits we see of any significance come in the form of iPhones, iPads, Andriod devices and rarely a Blackberry. Good news is, most of those devices have a browser that will render something close to a desktop browser. So it seems as these (still somewhat elusive) days of mobile approach, I think the days of thinking of mobile as a different beast that needs separate sites or exhaustive testing come closer to an end. Good news all around