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If you can do it: Yes! If it's easy: Quite easy if you know basic JavaScript. If it's a good option: Maybe, but probably not. You can use GTM to quickly make some changes but if you want to make more structural changes you definitely don't want to use GTM as a way to hack your site around.

Hi, Based on the info you've given, I would definitely go for your option 3. Having links in the footer of the site is never a good idea as it multiplies the number of links by as many pages you have on the site. If you think it makes sense to have a page presenting the other websites then that sounds great and only means one external link to each site; sounds like you could create some nice content on this page too! Hope that helps

It seems that the Sudden drop in indexed pages reported in  WMT might relate  to some reporting issues from Google - https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/qkvudy6VqnM;context-place=topicsearchin/webmasters/sitemap|sort:date

This is mostly a Google News implementation as discussed here: https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40543, and could be tricky to make effective within real estate listings. Is your coverage of the market so complete that people have to view your site? Or could they easily find an alternative?

Hi propertyshark, Local links, from relevant sources, will have a positive impact on your country specific rankings. For example the local chamber of commerce, local business directories and other citation sources are all good sources for country specific links. The same goes for non English languages - a German website getting links from .de domains, hosted in Germany, is a good indicator to the search engines the website is a local authority. Putting aside the direct SEO gains, the business benefits also shouldn't be ignored as you will receive more targeted traffic and potential leads to your website. That said, it is always worth getting international links as part of your link building campaign. A diverse link portfolio is key to riding out future search engine algo changes. Diversify! Hope that helps. Cheers, Andrew

I think canonicalization is the best option for your case. Make http://www.propertyshark.com/mason/ny/New-York-City/Maps/Manhattan-Apartment-Sales-Map?zoom=2&x=0.518&y=0.3965 canonical tag as http://www.propertyshark.com/mason/ny/New-York-City/Maps/Manhattan-Apartment-Sales-Map. Then google wil show http://www.propertyshark.com/mason/ny/New-York-City/Maps/Manhattan-Apartment-Sales-Map in search results and problem will be solved. Google will still count backlinks for those url's but if you choose nourl google will not index them again. If you use canonical tag, all incoming links' juice ,related to that page, collected by main page.

We did not get more details on that - I assume it may raise some flags if you suddenly redirect 20 domains. I'm not sure if or why is that, that's why I decided to ask a follow-up question. Btw, thank you both for your replies!