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Google+  & Google Local are two different things (confusing I know!) So if you have a Google plus page and a Google local page that's good and normal you have more than that yes I would recommend removing them. Google+ is for social and Google local is to help people find you (locally) Hope that helps, sorry if its overly confusing.

Hi Ben If you could break down your traffic data into segments, such as branded keywords vs non-branded keywords, that would be a big help.  A drop in branded keyword traffic would reflect seasonality, whereas a drop in non-brand might suggest the effect of Penguin.  If you have any historical rankings to back up those traffic figures as well, that would help. We've all made mistakes in SEO - the challenge is to learn from them.  I think LinkDetox is definitely worth the money.  You can also tweet for a discount and I think it still makes the tool free for a short period if you do - so you can try before you buy.  Send Christoph a tweet (he made the tool) to check if this still is the case: http://twitter.com/cemper

Thanks for your comments.. I agree comntent does need beefing up bit.. on the case with the duplicate titles.. they are being created by my eccommerce platform, as is the script. How should I put the script in an external file.

I don't know a lot about Joomla but I'm thinking the rel="canonical" will do it. Give it a try. It certainly won't mess anything up. It's a good practice to have those tags in place regardless.