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That could be for a variety of reasons. Is that site the only one that is offering that particular product? Is it a highly trafficked site with a lot of backlinks, reviews, and online activity?  Are the pages simply coded properly using canonical tags which help them escape "wrath"? These are all valid questions when you're doing competitive analysis and all things that Google considers along with dozens of other considerations.

Your best practice is to create new descriptions, take new photos or alter the existing ones (add text, crop, change contrast, etc.). This way your listing is seen as fresh and original content and will eventually take precedence over their carbon copy approach. If you have a better page with better content that's more informative to the customer, Google will choose your listing over 20 other sites that all have the same photos and descriptions.

Originality always wins....in most cases. Keep in mind that there are many other considerations in the Google algorithms, so don't expect to beat out Amazon no matter how hard you try.

Yes, then it that case, you would want to use a canonical tag indicating which page Google should focus on. If the page is defunct or not used anymore, then do as Irving suggests and 301 it.  Good luck.

Yes, then it that case, you would want to use a canonical tag indicating which page Google should focus on. If the page is defunct or not used anymore, then do as Irving suggests and 301 it.  Good luck.

Your question is not really clear. If you're building your website using a program like FrontPage, it creates a "home page" usually using index.htm or index.html.  index.php is not typically "created" unless you're using a program like Wordpress or some other PHP based site that uses it for the home page.  That's the part of the question I'm unclear on as to what you mean.

As for robots.txt versus canonical, it depends on what you're trying to do. If you want the search engines to ignore it, use robots.txt to block it. Using a canonical tag simply tells search engines which page you prefer for it to use if there are multiple similar pages.

For instance, if you have 5 widget pages and they all have the same content, you would use a canonical tag to tell Google which one of those pages you would like for them to use to avoid all 5 pages potentially being seen as duplicate content.  It knows those pages are there, but you tell it which one to consider when it's crawling your site. That's a simplified explanation, but essentially how it's used.

So if you want Google to ignore the index.php page, a canonical tag is not the option you want.

Google is aware that 404 errors can't always be avoided since you don't have any control over someone creating a bad link on an external site. So the impact on your SEO should be little to none unless it's completely out of hand and occurring as a result of something internal such as a bad navigational structure.

I would not suggest 301 redirecting 404 pages to the home page of a site because it's frustrating to users who may not be aware of what's going on. It can be potentially frustrating if they're expecting to see a specific page and keep getting pushed to the home page with no explanation as to why it's happening.

Your best bet is going to be creating a custom 404 page that indicates that the page is not available and make suggestions to other areas on your site and a means to contact you if they can't find what they're looking for. That way they know what's happening and don't get frustrated in the process.

And don't forget to continually monitor the reporting errors in Google Webmaster Tools to see the biggest offenders. If you see missing pages getting double digit visits, build an actual page on that URL directing them to the right alternate place (assuming that the page actually exists elsewhere in your new site setup).  If there are simply too many 404 errors happening, just stick with the custom 404 solution above and clean as you monitor the activity. But it's just not a good user experience or practice to 301 without an explanation.

Setting up three separate pages for each "location" is going to be a disservice to your site. Google is concerned about the content on the page. Don't use too much URL and title tag trickery or it will have the exact opposite SEO effect that you're looking for where you won't rank for any of the locations.

I would HIGHLY suggest that you consider moving your plumbing and painting services onto different websites. The two fields really do not compliment each other and you'd benefit from being able to create websites that are more relevant. For instance, create a plumbing site that list the services you provide (We snake drains, waterproofing, pipe repair, toilet replacement, etc.), locations, maybe a how-to section, Q&A area, contact pages, etc.  Even better would then be to expand on each service such as a full page on waterproofing, a full page on toilet repair, etc.  And that way the entire site is focused JUST on plumbing and it will have a better shot at performing well on the search engines for plumbing terms since it's more relevant to plumbing.

As for the location dilemma, just list the areas that you service in the content of the page.  If the locations are all within a specific county or region, it's best to focus on that instead.  Then you can simply create a title tag saying "ABC Plumbing Service & Repair - Proudly Serving Location A, B & C". A good dose of keyword research would serve you well before you construct your title tags. Find out what people are searching for and especially search volume regarding "service + location".   Here in the states, people search for "Atlanta plumber" FAR more frequently than they would "Roswell plumber".  But counties that have multiple cities work very well also.  Research it.

I'd search out a consultant to help you in this process to get the best results. While I obviously would push us myself, there are hundreds here who can also help you out. We're everywhere.

Don't bother with plugins with this one.

Simply go to http://maps.google.com and pull up your address on the map. Once your location appears, click the "link" icon in the upper left (next to the printer icon). That will give you the HTML that you can then copy and post onto your contact page.

To do this, open the Contact page in Wordpress and switch to HTML view in the content section. Then simply paste the script you copied from Google Maps onto the page where you want it to display. This will not only embed the map on the page, but also allow visitors to interact with it right on the page.

Good luck!

Hmm. Let me research, but that seems like a legitimate reasoning. The only crux of that answer is that why would a typical searcher (someone like my parents) give a poo about what Google has selected as relevant? Especially when in some cases it's as innocuous as ALT text behind an image? If it wanted to utilize that feature to show the searcher where on the page was the most relevant to what they searched for, so that maybe they would know where to look when they arrived on the page, it's doing a very poor job. I think we're viewing a feature that doesn't have the quirks worked out yet because there doesn't seem to be rhyme or reason.

That's what I had originally thought.  But that's not all there is to this.  Even in your example for Hivelocity.net, it's showing the searcher (assumed) what it found on the page that was relevant to what they searched for.  But by that logic, is it then saying that the text behind the image is more relevant to "dedicated servers" than anything else it could find in its database? This is where that assumption kind of falls apart. Especially since the area they're highlighting wouldn't even be visible to a typical user that never has even clicked to see source code before.  The selections seem haphazard.

It's almost as if they're giving us insight into the algorithm and what it sees, but the value of what they're showing is bottom of the barrel. Even when "Dedicated servers" is in their title tag, header tags, etc., but it chose text behind an image?  There's more to this...

My question is with the new Google SERP.  I posted a pic of it at http://www.hortonwebdesign.com/images/new-google-page.gif.

If you mouse over the arrows to the right of a result on the SERP, it pops up a preview of the page. On some results it also highlights a section of the page with a red box. What does this represent? Does it represent a key area that they are looking at in determining the positioning?

I have some clients that are asking me and it doesn't make a lot of sense. In my example above I searched for "seo expert in georgia" and on my result (I'm #2), it shows a preview, but the part it has chosen to highlight with a red box is just, um, ...useless. It's highlighting a Recent Post sidebar on the right halfway down the page. Surely this can't be what they're looking at as what they view as "useful" to that search.  This simply can't be what they're using to determine positioning. Or is it?

Just please explain what I'm seeing here.

new-google-page.gif.