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You should safely ignore and remove Meta Language Tag.

Meta Language basically, gives instruction to browser that the page should only be displayed in the language as prescribed. In absence of this tag, if a visitor of other country, having different language visits the site, Google browser provides a translation of page so that the user can aptly view the details

Pl suggest, some pages having some spam links pointed to those pages are been redirected to 404 error page (through 301 redirect) - as removing them manually was not possible due to part of core component of cms and many other coding issue, the only way as advised by developer was making 301 redirect to 404 page.

Does by redirecting these pages to 404 page using 301 redirect, will nullify all negative or spam links pointing to them and eventually will remove the resulting spam impact on the site too.

Many Thanks

Its a much better and clear explanation... +1 to it. Cheers !!

In order to exclude individual pages from search engine indices, **the noindex meta tag **is actually superior to robots.txt.

Refer - http://moz.com/learn/seo/robotstxt

If they have pretty low content or do not add any value and is not searched by users too

Will be better to add noindex so as to have search engines crawl your site in a better way.

a) Some how, the authority passed will be lesser. As under 301 redirects - its not 100% authority which is passed to redirection page. Refer this - http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/021832.html

So, Authority passes on keeps diminishing if the chain of redirects keeps on increasing to reach to that page.

b) Canonical gives google a strong indication that the original and main page is x, Google generally respect this and pass on authority to the canonical page.

Had i been on your side, what i would have actually done is :-

a) Removed all 301 redirect chain i.e A to B to home page etc and make all redirect from A to home page, B to home page and applied canonical to home page

b) Have standalone template for Home page and apply canonical tag to it say http://www.abc.com - so that if i near future, again if something changes. The template override of canonical will be considered the main page.

Ideally, you should avoid 301 redirect from index.php, as it will cause to go in infinite loop. I too have used 301 redirect earlier, but later applied a better way is Rel=canonical tag

Still, if you look for 301 redirect - below is the code which will help redirecting :-

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /.index.html\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^(.)index.html$ /$1 [R=301,L]

May also see this url for all sort of redirection from html, php, non www page to www page http://www.gabblet.com/post/2011/09/27/301-redirect-for-index-non-www-to-www-using-htaccess.aspx

Let know how it goes

Wondering, any reasons of avoiding buttons through  "addthis" and stick to direct share /like buttons of social sites.

Who has Blacklisted the IP Address. Is it Joomla forums or Gmail Account

However, as referred in this article :- http://moz.com/ugc/the-penguin-update-how-google-identifies-spam about spam emails

"So what about websites? Wouldn't that knowledge of identifying and classifying spam be shared with the search and webspam teams? Don't you think Matt Cutts has access to Gmail's spam detection data? I bet he does, and I bet some of it is being seen in this Penguin update.

Gmail is a pretty well documented product. You can read up quite a bit on spam filters and how they work. I would recommend this to everyone as we can then get a better idea of what Google sees as spam content. For me the biggest takeaway is that Gmail openly admits to using user data and feedback in classifying and identifying spam. This should be a huge indicator to us all that user data is playing a role in how Google classifies and identifies spam on the web. The trick now is to figure out exactly what user data/feedback is being used."

You mean to say that the article on home page is updated with new article every hour

Yes, as long as the content and snippet get changes and backed with Authority links - it will enable search engine to crawl website more often in lookout of fresh content. **Note - **Search Engines crawl site basis the source code, so as long as the content is changing frequently - so will the crawl too

Hi Christy,

The photo does not shown in for our site, though the link in question of Search Engine Land - Barry photo has reinstated in Search Engines as checked.

Presuming that the method - we have adopted for Google Authorship as linking is correct in our site - is there anything we can do more or may sit on it to see some miracle from Search Giant to show the photo

Hello, It generally takes time. My personal observation is even if your site gets crawled on daily basis, still the page errors will take anywhere from 4 to 6 weeks from GWT to gets removed of

So - as long as the implementation is correct - you may focus on correction of other errors (if any) on the site, Webmaster will soon be updated with this.

No -  Apps are neither crawled and nor indexed by search engines. Backlinks wont be of help

As per Android Developer -  "When you develop a great app, Android users show their appreciation through ratings and reviews. They rate your app (out of 5 stars) after downloading it and can post a short description of their experience. When other users are considering your app, they look at the ratings and reviews as key benchmarks of the app’s quality.  Your app’s rating is one of the most important factors influencing its ranking in the various lists and search results in Google Play. It's also one of the key signals that the editorial staff looks for, when curating apps and games for promotion in the store."

Refer on Visibility for Google Apps :- http://developer.android.com/distribute/googleplay/about/visibility.html

If your site does not get crawl completely, i will recommend

a) To create a site-map, so that search engines can understand the site hierarchy and can deep crawl the site

b) Look at your site structure, Make your site more organized so as to have better crawl. It should not happen that a user needs to visit - home page > category page > sub category page > article or below to read the article. At best, article snippet should come on home page for a day. If not, should be accessible from home page > category page > article

c) Submit the article posted to Social Media - Reddit, Pinterest, Twitter etc. It will help search engines discover your link faster

By sure - will improve the crawl mechanism to your site

Yep, thanks for the video. Lets see when the Authorship photo comes in, will let know

Can i safely presume now - that i have to make no changes in authorship code and link from our site, and should wait for Seach Giant to show some mercy... Thanks for your follow-up message on it

Does it seems perfectly okay to make the site page (linked by spam links) to have 301 redirect to show 404 error page

As if its a CMS system where many other pages are linked through other subcategories too of the component, so the option of cutting down the bad page, which is hurt by low quality links is through 301 redirect to land to 404 error page. Will it diminish or rather make completely off the value of all spam links pointing to it and finally does not affect the site at all.

Sure, But Oleg said, "If you noindex the page, G won't be able to access it and it will lose all its authority".

If in case the page loses all its authority - does it still will pass on the negative value to the domain or other pages due to low authority or spam backlinks pointing to it

If its true, then may be making the page cut off from site by marking it 404 is a better way !!

Sure, thanks

Does it mean if we noindex it - can it be safely presumed that all the low quality links pointing to that url will be nullified and it will not have any negative effect to the site. I mean there wont be any need for making the page 404, if we still use that page as regular part of the site, like for filling forms etc.

Many thanks, once again for your detailed reply

Hello Oleg,

Am also interested in knowing more about it

Does marking a noindex, follow or noindex, nofollow to that page is a better way than 404 redirect ?

Also, i dint get you for meta refresh redirect. What does it mean like ?

Hi Christy,

Many thanks for taking time to analyze it, I have made all recommended changes

a) Put up contributor link as home page

b) Made Photo more visible & clear with much better headshot

c) Also, added rel=author in news too - as direct link between Google profile, rather than the previous 3 way linkin' process

Fingers crossed, will owe you - if its done..