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Hi John. You can also exclude by domain within Analytics. See: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2795830

Getting precise numbers on such a broad topic will likely be a bridge too far, plus they start to move and oscillate into the future so some projection factor is going to have to be used for any sort of planning as you make them. For example, look at Google Trends analysis of the topic LEGO: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=LEGO&cmpt=q.  And look at some of the ways it begins to get messy: Is it just the industry of toys? What about the movies LEGO is now producing?  Or are Legoland searches at the core of it?

The broader net you cast the more odd intersections you're going to come across...

It sounds like you're trying to use these numbers not as an industry report but for actionable budgeting and tactical planning for the nationwide business. Or maybe I'm mis-reading your question. The point being, your existing business should have some reliable numbers on current conversion rates and traffic that are much more applicable to scale into other locations. Why not use those and first apply some level of market penetration based on demographics and populations?

TL;DR: I'd project some simple trends for the industry, but then be tactical on the small scale. Work where you can move the needle most.  Cheers!

I think your problem may be one of differentiation. While example.com and www.example.com are technically two different domains, they're not substantially different enough when it comes to creating a new site on the ashes of a negative one. (i.e. canonical redirecting off www or non-www for the same domain name is a common practice for websites that aren't trying to change their image).  I can't speak specifically to your situation but you might consider creating an entirely new domain if you think example.com is that negative.

Hi Yozzer.  Here's a tool you can use: http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_browser-ww-monthly-201004-201104 From the drop downs below the chart you can select Mobile Browser or Mobile OS and then select different locations: Worldwide, Continent, or Country.  In the legend at right you can also turn on or off different data represented in the chart. When you mouse over a data point within the chart you'll see the percentage of use for that Browser or OS.  Hope this helps some.

If the domain was recently expired, you might see some short term success, but long term success will be dependent on what you put into it after launch.

Is there a contract in place that explains what you do and how it's equitable amongst the franchises? Do the franchisees have the option of doing their own work in addition to what you're doing?  If so you can say, "Hi angry franchise owner. Why yes, I've been working on your site's presence as per XYZ in the contract. Oh, you see franchise owner #2 in the search results? Yes, I did XYZ for him too. It looks like he's been really active in getting reviews though..."  If there isn't something in writing you might have a lot cat herding on your hands.

Hi David. Congrats on the rankings. Something I'd consider for a project like this would be split testing what you currently have with new designs.  For example, the flyer printing page might work well talking about all the ways the company's superior printing has met customers needs, then you can show several examples--nightclub flyers, community board flyers, handout flyers, etc.--with testimonials, content, and imagery around each.

That way you're not only increasing the content that could possibly rank, but also focusing on driving more business for your clients.  Key features would be simple anchor-based on page navigation, engaging content and graphics, stories of past customer satisfaction.

The central idea of canonical is that it's the source while the iterations are iterations... so I'd avoid moving canonical around.  What you're also is describing within your network is a little hard for me to wrap my head around.  Why are sites A, B, C, and D different?  Are they localized? Are they in different verticals? Are they talking to different channels or interests?  If there are differences like these the content should likely be unique enough to address the different market being served by the different site.

If not selecting one as your resource center and handling campaigns as campaign variables seems like the way to go, ergo: Site A/Resources.  Link from Site B = Site A/Resources?v=campaign_ids_promotions_timing_etc. Google even has a tool for doing just this: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867. And why this is helpful here: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033863. Cheers!

Sean, the percentages are the Statistic divided by Country/Region. So if you select Mobile OS and Worldwide the 31.56% percentage for April 2011 on SymbianOS means 31.56% of the World's Mobile OS uses SymibainOS.  If you switch Country/Region to the United States the percentage will indicate that area's usage for that Statistic. Remember though, it's only measuring Mobile OS in this instance so it's not a percentage total of all web surfing traffic, just mobile web surfers.

You'd have to reverse engineer this data and plug in some statistics form another location on specific device usage or purchases in order to get a guestimate on the number of iPhone users, by device, within your countries of interest.

Hi Angelos. Yup, you can do that. Here's a full guide here: http://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection and you'll want to pay attention to the parts regarding page to page redirection, such as: RedirectMatch 301 /poker-face http://www.example.com/poker-faces

You can typically find further redirection support from your server host and related to whichever CMS or web software you're using.  Cheers!

Hi Mike. Regarding your questions...

1. No, having Google index your site's search results pages is contrary to their guidelines, specifically, "Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don't add much value for users coming from search engines." From: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769. If you did it, you'd run the risk of having your site reported as webspam here: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport.
2. Plenty of other strategies could help your site. You might also find ways to increase your links internally by a healthy amount; you can link out to highly reputable sites pertaining to your pages; you can get social signals referencing your pages; and on and on. Lots you can do!
3. The Internet is kind of big.  This specific site, and these specific results are like a few blips in the trillions of other signals Google handles.

It sounds like you're working on your site the right way. Focus on being a better user experience like you are and even if you're getting a few less visits by ranking a little lower than your competitor currently you're still going to have much better results.  Cheers!

You can also install site search and look at what people are trying to find once they arrive to your site. Further, if you have profiles that are thoroughly developed you can look at the analytics to see which aspects of that are drawing the most visits for setting content creation goals when it comes to planning what to add to other profiles.  Cheers!

Or make the Keurig sessions min-value:10 every day until this is solved.

Ah, is your embedded blog on a different domain and being iframed in? The analytics would be more detailed looking at the direct blog data. It sounds like something within the blog went mini-viral and is producing the spike.

These guides should serve you pretty well: http://moz.com/pages/search_results?q=checklist  A lot of what you do depends on the situation.

You're in the clear using a Google custom search box because Google is the one delivering the results so they know not to double up on those.  You're right that the pages that are getting indexed in Google on the other site are from a different process and an attempt to trick the engine with sparse, dynamically generated content.

Hint?  Huh?  I'm not nearly that clever.  Cheers!

Hi Richard. One thing you could do is run a PPC campaign directed at this page using only Company Name branded terms (thus helping with a low CPC) and split test all the different titles you're considering. This way you'll find one that gits your needs as well as one that generates the best CTR based on your tests. Cheers!

Hi Sherry. Have you been running any paid campaigns targeting these specific differences? They can be very useful in getting some quick testing in place before deciding on changes like these.

It's a bit harder to parse without specific examples, because if you had distributors or a physical presence in each of these states, then you'd definitely want to have content relating to both boats in each location, plus you'd want to be using local optimization tools as well for the brick and mortar locations.

Still, if the site is purely online--like a craigslist or boat trader or the like--and is a focus point for boat sellers within each state then creating the always present categorical versions like you talk about is beneficial as well (both for attracting buyers and sellers).

In any event, there's a lot of content that can be localized on pages like these--fishing spots, lakes, rivers, races--that then fold into the pontoon designs for some, and the sail designs for others.  Cheers!

It sounds like your best bet is going to be digging up some analytics from your old site, finding common URL patterns, and redirecting them more thoroughly via rewrite rules.  A clever use of sorting in a spreadsheet can make this task go by much quicker, and if you have some key pages on the new site where you feel entire clusters of old pages can redirect that will help too as you're not redirecting one to one.  It would also help to tag the new site's applicable pages with rel=canonical. Lastly, you can apply a nocache tag to the pages on your old site, althugh they should be flushing out fairly soon. Those are the general recs.  There is a certain amount of time involved in the process, and it's not a strict number of days/hours/minutes.

Oh, for your 404 page (http://www.structural.net/;flkajhsdlfg) I'd recommend making it a lot more functional, especially since you're expecting a lot of 404 traffic in this current process.  Check out Apple's for an example (http://www.apple.com/lkjsfdawe) and this blog post for more ideas: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/personalizing-your-404-error-pages (an oldie, but goodie.)

Hi Kyle. There was recently a discussion on Canonical + Hreflang here: http://moz.com/community/q/hreflang-canonical-inquiry-for-website-with-29-different-languages. The basic takeaway is that, "Fully done translations are considered canonical within their own languages, so no need to point to the www version as canonical."  Gianluca further expands on this saying, "Instead, you should use the www. URL as canonical if the geotargeted country and the www. share the same language (i.e.: US, Canada, Australia, UK... that all are in English). In that case yes that would be the correct solution for avoiding the duplicated content issue."  Cheers!