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I have a similar issue. For whatever reason, Google has decided our CEO (Glen Kelman) is the 'author' of some of our site pages. There is no author markup on the page anywhere. In fact, our CEO's name isn't anywhere on the page. Yet, in SERPs, he is the 'author' of our Seattle market page (you can likely see it by searching for 'seattle real estate' and looking for Redfin in the results).

Glen is a prolific blogger who not only posts to the Redfin blog, but also guest blogs on high profile sites around the web so it stands to reason that Google is very 'familiar' with him as an author. Moreover, he lives in Seattle so maybe Google is thinking, "Glen is from Seattle...he's the CEO of Redfin...he's a prolific author...Glen + Seattle + Redfin + Author = Glen is the author of the Seattle market page on Redfin!"

Any ideas on how to stop Google from making this mistake?

I noticed something in Google search results today that I can't explain. Any help would be appreciated. I performed a real estate based search and the top result featured a rich snippet showcasing the following...

Address                                                                     Price            Bd/Ba
912 Garden District Dr #17. Charlotte, NC 28202      $179,990       3 / 2
222 S Caldwell St #1602. Charlotte, NC 28202          $389,238       2 / 2&1/2

However, when I visit the page associated with this information, there is no Schema to be found. In fact, the page is, for the most part, just a large table listing homes on the market. The table headings are Address, Price, and Bd/Ba.

Is it common for Google to use table based data to generate rich snippets? What is the best way to influence this? In the absence of Schema (as the page we are talking about has no Schema implementation), does Google default to table data? Has anyone seen this behavior before and, if so, can you point me to it?

EDIT: I've now come across a few other examples where the information is not in a table, but rather in divs. Why are such sites (you can find some by searching for "[ZIPCODE] real estate") getting this treatment?

Thanks for everyone's input!

Without pointing any fingers, let's just say this is happening in the wild right now. It came as a bit of a surprise to me as I wouldn't expect Google to be fooled into ranking a site better for multiple keywords based on dynamic internal anchor text. To be clear, I have no evidence this technique is helping or that the motivation is to game Google for better rankings, but I haven't come up with any other reason.

If it is working, I must admit, it's pretty clever...

I'm asking for people's opinions on varying internal anchor text. Before you jump in and say, "Oh yes, varying your anchor text is always a good idea", let me explain.

I'm not talking about varying anchor text on different links scattered throughout a site. We all know that is a wise thing to do for a variety of reasons that have been covered in many places. What I'm talking about is including semi-useful links below the fold and then varying the anchor text with each page load. Each time Googlebot crawls a page, it sees different anchor text for each link. That way, Googlebot is seeing, for example, 'san diego bars', 'taverns in san diego', 'san diego clubs', and 'pubs in san diego' all pointing to a San Diego bar/tavern/club/pub page.

I'm wondering if there is value in this approach. Will it help a site rank well for multiple search queries? Could it potentially be better than static anchor text as it may help Google better understand the targeted page? Is it a good way to protect a large site with a huge number of internal links from Penguin?

To summarize, we're talking about the impact of varying the anchor text on a single page with each page load as opposed to varying the anchor text on different pages.

Thoughts?

Craig,

Actually, our structured data numbers tanked on 6/7 and then bounced back on 6/21 so it isn't an issue anymore. That being said, I'm definitely curious about what happened if you have any ideas.

Thanks for the heads up.

Ryan

We encountered a similar issue recently. We had two pages ranking on Google's front page (lets call them page A and page B). Page A was in the local bucket...page B was below the local bucket in the top 10. We updated our Google Places page to point to the URL of page B. Google moved page B into the local bucket and dropped page A altogether. However, page B did no better in the local bucket than page A.

We have since reversed this decision.

On June 7th, 2013 our structured data (as reported in GWT) dropped from ~61M items on ~7M pages to ~13.5M items on ~1.5M pages. Since that time those numbers have continued to fall. We made no code changes during this time. I've searched around the web and found a few people pointing to a similar June 7th, 2013 drop in reported structured data.

Can anyone offer any insight beyond speculation? Outside of the June 7th date, what can cause such a dramatic drop in structured data? Thanks in advance.

Does OSE have the ability to crawl AJAX pages utilizing Google's escaped fragment directive? I ask because I'm seeing all our AJAX built pages returning HTTP status codes of 404 when I run OSE reports.

See for yourself

My URL is: http://www.redfin.com/TX/Austin/8413-Navidad-Dr-78735/home/31224372

We're using Google's AJAX crawling system, per the documentation here. https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/The example page above requires JavaScript to display content; it includes in the source. We have a lot of pages like this on our site.We expect Google to query us at this URL:http://www.redfin.com/TX/Austin/8413-Navidad-Dr-78735/home/31224372?escaped_fragment=This page renders correctly with JavaScript disabled.Are we doing this correctly? There are some small differences between the escaped_fragment HTML snapshot and the JavaScript-generated content. Will this cause any problems for us?We ask because there was a period of about two months (from October 4th to Dec 29th) during which Google's crawler radically decreased the hits to our escaped_fragment URLs; it's maybe recovering now, but maybe it isn't, and I wanted to be absolutely sure we're doing this correctly.

Anyone have any experience using PhantomJS to return HTML snapshots of AJAX rendered pages? More specifically, does anyone know if Google takes issue with this technique in any way?

Interested in learning about this technique? Using PhantomJS to allow Googlebot to crawl your AJAX pages.

Marcus, Great! That confirms everything I was thinking. We certainly aren't wasting our time page rank sculpting. Rather, I just wanted a confirmation (and appropriate citation) before requesting some changes. Thanks! Ryan

Does anyone know what the impact of a nofollowed link is on the ranking value any given page has to distribute? For example, if I have 2 links on a page, both followed, I know those links each distribute nearly 50% of the total ranking value the current page has to offer. However, if one of those links is nofollowed, does that automatically mean the other link gets the ranking value cast off by the nofollowed link? In other words, the single followed link now distributes nearly 100% of the ranking value the page has to offer?

It seems to me I remember hearing this was not the case and that the ranking value a nofollowed link would have if it were followed just evaporates. This would mean the single followed link still only passes on around 50%...not 100%.

Is the effect different if the links are internal vs. external?

If any citations are available to justify knowledge here, that would be great. I know a lot of people have opinions about this subject, but I'm not sure anyone knows Google's position.

Thanks!

If I'm updating a URL and 301 redirecting the old URL to the new URL, Google recommends I remove the old URL from our XML sitemap and add the new URL. That makes sense. However, can anyone speak to how Google transfers the ranking value (link value) from the old URL to the new URL?

My suspicion is this happens outside the sitemap. If Google already has the old URL indexed, the next time it crawls that URL, Googlebot discovers the 301 redirect and that starts the process of URL value transfer.

I guess my question revolves around whether removing the old URL (or the timing of the removal) from the sitemap can impact Googlebot's transfer of the old URL value to the new URL.

Is there a better day for link baiting than April 1st? The time has come for everyone to share their April Fool's Day link building campaigns!

This is our second attempt at capitalizing on April Fools with the first attempt (2010) falling flat.

http://bigfi.sh/aFd2011

From the way you've described your situation, yes, there is good value in the links you are getting.

What you want to be concerned about isn't one particular site linking to you and whether they are or are not related to your product / service. What you want to be concerned about is low quality sites that are highly associated with dubious content such as spamming, link buying and selling, cloaking, keyword stuffing, porn, gambling, etc. It is highly unlikely your clients are involved in any of these activities.

All that being said, Google understands site owners have limited control over who links to them. If you have an opportunity to get a link from a high quality site, count yourself lucky. Even more so if the link is truly authentic and is placed within copy that is related to what you do. In fact, I would go so far as to recommend you start asking your clients for a link to your site if they are happy with your service.

When I look at the backlink history via Majestic SEO, I see a big jump beginning around the start of this month. Any chance you have been doing some serious link building? Without a sound link profile, Google may take issue with rapid increases in inbound links.

Furthermore, I see a lot of links from locations that don't appear to have much to do with Yoga. This isn't typically an issue unless those are the overwhelming majority of links you have.

Finally, you have a large number of links from low quality locations such as forums, linking services, article hosting, etc.

Any of the aforementioned points could result in Google dropping your site from the index. To paraphrase Rand Fishkin, "Stop getting links. Start earning links."

In other words, consider spending more time crafting valuable content and building your sphere of influence to attract authentic inbound links.

Good luck.

There are a lot of questions right now regarding how links will be valued by search engines and Rand's post that Mike recommended is a great place to start your research.

One other thing to consider is the power of social media to help you earn traditional links. I know that isn't what you are asking about, but it's important to think about. Twitter, Facebook, Quora, etc. can be great tools for building reputation, crafting relationships, and sharing great content with people who like to build links. As such you may get your greatest value not from the Tweets and Likes, but rather from the resulting links your social circle will create.

To add to what Wissam has said, it is always a good idea to think about the following regarding URLs.

Be consistent everywhere. This includes both inbound links (which you only have so much control over) and internal links. Be sure to communicate this throughout the company as there are likely others who will be rolling out links (engineers, PR, SEM, etc.). We had a situation once where blog post links were being published both with and without the '/'. It made our reporting messy (until we 'fixed the glitch').

Decide whether to include or exclude the 'www' and permanently redirect the version you don't want to use to the version you do want to use. In making this decision, consider your current backlink profile. What do most of your links currently point to?

Good luck!

Here is a thought...

Rather than using a form, have you considered using a dedicated purchase link with parameters that define the chosen product? These parameters could then be updated dynamically via JavaScript as a user selects the version of the product they want. So you would end up with something like this...

Purchase Now

Now, write a function that gets this element by id and then updates the href attribute with the appropriate option number. For example...

function update(prodnum){

var temp = document.getElementById('product');

temp.setAttribute("href","NEW URL?"+prodnum);

}

Finally, you'll have to set up a UI that lets people select the product they want. I'll leave that up to you, but it should call the 'update' function you've written.

Think of it like this: user clicks on chosen product link > update function is called via JavaScript > 'Buy Now' link is updated with appropriate product number > user clicks on 'Buy Now' link and parameters are passed to checkout

FYI, you could also write a function that asks the user to select a product if they click the 'Buy Now' button without choosing a specific product. Something like, "Please select a product from the options below" or whatever.

Hope this is helpful. Good luck.

I think you'll find this post on the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog valuable.