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I agree with Matt - as long as your primary, internal links are consistent, it's ok to use a short version for offline purposes. The canonical tag is perfectly appropriate for this. The other option would be to use a third-party shortener that has built-in tracking, like Bit.ly. It uses a 301-redirect, but also captures the data. If you're just doing a test case, this might be easier all-around.

The value of the link is probably less than a link from a site from a different IP address but it is still a counted link and your site shouldn't be penalized. Here are some good discussions and studies on the topic: http://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-ppc-seo-discussion-forum/548022-getting-links-site-same-ip.html http://tomaltman.com/link-juice-based-on-domain-ip-addres/

Yes, it seems that this is the case that it's the .ie website that been crawled more often. I have recently launched a new section on the .co.uk website which has been crawled by Google and is not currently on the .ie website: http://www.avogel.co.uk/health/tinnitus/ However even though this copy is all original verified using copyscape, when I copy and paste the first paragraph into Google.co.uk, this webpage above is not the one that appears in Google.co.uk, so maybe there is something else going on? Thanks

Hi Adam, Thanks for your reply. I suppose what I could do is mention to them that if they are taking content from our website, they must have at the bottom of each page 'Text supplied by Company Name' the company name supplies a keyword that we target. I have actually just noticed that there are many retailers out there who are copying our content from our product pages without me knowing, I noticed this by copying a pasting the first paragraph of a number of my product pages, however what is strange that these websites come above my product pages, is this something to worry about? is Google giving me full credit for these pages? Kind Regards

Hi Stephen, The URL's in question are: UK version: http://www.avogel.co.uk/health/menopause/ Irish version: http://www.avogel.ie/health/menopause/ Any help would be appreciated. Kind Regards

Rand also wrote a great post a while back about what to do when the wrong page is ranking. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/wrong-page-ranking-in-the-results-6-common-causes-5-solutions

No problem Gary, good luck. Matt.

Google announced several changes the day before this, but that does not mean they necessarily rolled them out that day. My guess is that you received some sort of penalty, but we would have to know the site. You can private message me if you are interested in me taking a look.

Hi Geoff. 1. These are not websites I own, I had asked the webmaster to remove these site-wide links which they did. 2. They are not hosted on the same server. 3. The anchor text was keyword specific. 4. As a preventative measure, however it looks like this has back-fired. 5. Not to my knowledge, check PR and all is still the same. 6. Yes, they do have other links pointing to it, however in terms of percentage very little, as these were site-wide which was going into the thousands. Some keywords have disappeared that were not in the site-wide links, which is a concern, maybe there is something else going on? Shall I get the webmaster to re-instate these site-wide links?

Hi Gary, Not sure I can add anything not said here, but if you feel inclined to send me a PM with the URLs, I'd be more than happy to take a look at it.

Howdy! Just wanted to point out this question is several months old. The statement about "The same content in another language can trigger duplicate content issues" was a bit surprising to hear. Can you provide some more information about that? I'm more accustomed to what Google says in places like http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=182192#3 where they state "Websites that provide content for different regions and in different languages sometimes create content that is the same or similar but available on different URLs. This is generally not a problem as long as the content is for different users in different countries. While we strongly recommend that you provide unique content for each different group of users, we understand that this may not always be possible. There is generally no need to "hide" the duplicates by disallowing crawling in a robots.txt file or by using a "noindex" robots meta tag." Matt Cutts also talks about it being OK in a video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDg2AGRGjLQ. I'm also interested in knowing more about content needing to be relative to the directory name. Can you give a few more details?

Hi Irving, Thanks for you reply. I am using data-vocabulary.org rather than schema.org Ok, so what you mention is on page, what about off page? Thanks

Thanks Matt for quick reply, this makes sense.

Hi Peter, Thanks for your reply. So do you advice on hosting these original articles on my own blog rather than an external blog? If so, does that mean that internal links have more value than external links? What If the external blog post was high authority? Thanks

I will do Hannah, thanks again.

It was everypage on the site. I also noticed the pages that are not indexed no longer, they have no PR, is that expected?

Regarding your last point I am sure I recently watched a WBF were Rand had mentioned this was a good way of getting backlinks, I did question this myself when I heard this.

Sorry Peter, my previous reply looks strange, was using the iPad, not sure what happened, anyway, what I meant to say was: So just to clarify, the homepage of the website would show: And product page would be:

Yeah, I know can you believe it Anyway, look we know lots of websites are doing it, yes even the big brands and are ranking well due to this strategy, I suppose having a big budget to play with, the temptation is just too much. I am paranoid also, isn't everyone in this industry, I mean if you do follow Google's guidelines, there is no way you are going to rank well for competitive keywords, I look across all industries, especially retail and they are all it. You have got to be more aggressive I think to gain good SERPs

Hi Gary, I'm wondering if you have an update for us of how things are going for you?