I choose not to split it.  With all that has changed in the SEO world I am glad I did not.  The site has fared well thru all the changes and still ranks well for both divisions.

I'm researching Etsy and I think its eye opening that you remind us Etsy has its own algorithm.  I suppose you mean within the Etsy URL site search.  But outside of Etsy ~ now that's Google's territory!

Tons and tons of people are complaining that Etsy sales are down significantly.  So is this coming because Google has tossed Etsy aside?  Or is this because of a change in the Etsy algorithm?

Is there anywhere outside of Etsy that keeps track of Etsys performance in Google search?

Have you ever heard that upgrading vBulletin forum software from 3.8 to 4.2 will kill SEO ratings/rank?

If it were me I would leave it as is. It is a legitimate link coming from a dealer web site.  I really think Google is baiting here.

For example:

Raven stopped use of scraped Google, SEMRush data on Jan. 2

Raven stopped offering unauthorized Google SERP rankings and keyword data (a.k.a. scraped Google data) on Jan. 2, 2013. The change included the retirement of the SERP Tracker and the elimination of SEMRush data from the Raven platform.

Raven has released new SEO performance reports that make it easy to show clients the impact of campaigns to improve organic traffic. Raven will continue to upgrade reports through the year.

We thank the many customers who continue their business with Raven.

More details about the SEO performance reports and other recent releases are available

Is SEOMoz protected in some way?  Or will you have to give up rankings reports too?

I think they are worth it.  I've actually seen some nice movement in rankings after a BOTW listing recently.

Feeling your pain for sure.  I would start looking at the back link profile.

Another site now completely wiped of the SERP's this morning.

So ARE you suggesting that for local city pages that you add the canonical tag to point to the home page?

I guess I'm a little confused on this as Adam is?

Can you explain your thoughts behind this?

Not much value on your city pages.  Really, makes you wonder if you are selling a tourist destination or an ac company.  The two just don't mesh to me.

I would really work at the content on the city pages.

http://kobiecomplete.com/air-conditioning-service-area/ac-repair-sarasota/

Also you might consider using references from the city you are targeting on the city page.  Keep it super targeted.  This one has a reference from different city.

"Penguin won't really let you rank for them now organically, but locally you definitely have a shot"

They may or may not let you rank organically.  But I would sure try.  I would still create landing pages for the cities.  With only a few I would tend to put my cards on the fact that you would get be able to rank them.

I reported them as soon as I found it.  We'll see what happens. Also begged, I mean requested the Google Gods to reevaluate the site based upon the proof I submitted.  Still waiting...

Yes it is still indexed as of right now.  I have reported it to Google.  They have just removed my content.  Now they are using another persons article.

We are still indexed, just went from first page on all keywords to beyond 50

I'm going thru the site now to make extra sure that we meet all Google guidelines then I am going to submit for a reevaluation.  The site was nicely SEO'd. I'm just going to make sure now that it was not too SEO'd.

One of my sites that was affected had over 4,000 back links from a single site.  The person had taken an article that I had written and placed on Ezine and was dynamically creating content for his ADSENSE site using my one article.  Generating 4,000 links.  Needless the say the poor fool had no clue what he was doing. The site was a complete joke.

I notified the hosting company and they made him take it all down.

Now here we sit no where to be found in the search engines.

Makes me really second guess the whole article thing.

local niche, so yes the anchor text was probably very similar.  What's really weird is that I just noticed on one of my sites that I had accidentally left some REALLY old pages up for a couple of cities.  These are actually ranking now front page.  The others are back on page 2 or 3 and this one is now top 5.

I think I'm just going to see what next week holds.  Google seems to have lost a screw this week.  I've had enough! Signing off for the week...

Yes, I've had several hit hard.  A few are from the same situation that you have.  I'm hoping that the update has not completed yet and that things will raise back up over the next few weeks.  I can't see how this could be the "final product" ... at least I'm hoping.

I agree that there is no right answer.  I too worry that by splitting it that I would be loosing a lot of the back linking work for that division.  Thereby causing the site to drop in rankings.  It does TERRIFIC for the other division, which is the biggest part of their business.  I really hate to mess that part up on an experiment like this.

I'm still 50-50.  I would love to hear from someone that has done this and hear details about what they experienced.

I have a client that owns a business that really could be easily divided into two separate business in terms of SEO.  Right now his web site covers both divisions of his business.

He gets about 5500 visitors a month.  The majority go to one part of his business and around 600 each month go to the other. So about 11%

I'm considering breaking off this 11% and putting it on an entirely different domain name.  I think I could rank better for this 11%.  The site would only be SEO'd for this particular division of the company.  The keywords would not be in competition with each other.

I would of course link the two web sites and watch that I don't run into any duplicate content issues.

I worry about placing the redirects from the pages that I remove to the new pages.  I know Google is not a fan of redirects.  Then I also worry about the eventual drop in traffic to the main site now.  How big of a factor is traffic in rankings?

Other challenges include that the business services 4 major metropolitan areas.

Would you do this?  Have you done this?  How did it work?

Any suggestions?