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Hi Schmeetz, I've had a rough time getting reviews to work for schema as well. The structured data testing tool can give you a positive when something's actually missing that'll stop Google from displaying your stars. The nice thing is, if you're using structured data, Google will update their listings as soon as they recrawl the page, so you can test things fairly easily. Use Google Webmaster Tools to "Fetch as Google" and "Submit to Index" to get a page with new code recrawled within an hour or so. I don't think you need dates in order to get star ratings on SERPs. I haven't needed them on my company's site. But, I noticed that all of your markup is using content tags rather than marking up actual content on the page. My guess is, that's the issue, that Google doesn't trust content that isn't seen on the page. Have you tried marking up the actual content? _Note: _Google will also sometimes blacklist domains from displaying reviews. This isn't an issue for you, but for others reading this: you can test it by searching for "site: [product URL]". If Google displays the ratings then, it's not a technical issue, it's a blacklisting issue. Test out marking up visible HTML text and let us know how it goes! Best, Kristina

It's really hard to speak in generalities, but my gut reaction is that splitting to a subdomain is going to cause you more harm than good. You'll likely fragment your links and could very well harm your root domain. If the blog was clearly harming you somehow, that would be one thing, but to do this preventively is, IMO, a very bad idea. I'd really rather see you focus on improving the quality of the blog and better integrating it into the main site. Keep the posts you have that have solid links and traffic, but work on cleaning up the rest. Especially focus on duplicate content and any issues that may be easy wins. Meanwhile, maybe make a move toward quality-over-quantity in 2013 and reappraise how the blog fits your broader business.

Hi Schmeetz, Thanks for clarifying that we are talking about a drop of your Local Organic rankings and not your Place Page. Obviously, the biggest shakeup happening right now is what's being called Panda 3.2. See: http://searchengineland.com/google-panda-3-2-update-confirmed-109321 Is there any chance you've got thin or duplicate content on your city landing pages?

Thanks for your help so far. btw...we don't actually sell jars ;-). No drop in rankings because we've had the blog since the get-go. My biggest concern is that, because of our blog, very little of my overall content is about jars. This may effect our rankings since the ratio is way off....jar content to other. Has anyone heard of Google differentiating blog content vs website content or have experienced this? I am missing keyword rich anchor text links and i'm working hard on this. Strong non-spammy profile to date. If i subdomain my blog it increases the jar related content ratio on my site but i lose the backlinks since subdomaining it essentially creates a separate site. Does the ratio affect my ability to rank?

I'm sure there are some people that do prioritize their sitemap manually, but not me. I don't think the priority setting is THAT important!

LOL, I don't know why it came out that I deleted also the first answer... I confirm what said in the other answer and give you the reasons: the blog in the same subdomain, like it is now, extends the long tail the site is ranking for (aka: you site is more visible for a bigger number of serps the blog gives a voice to your site, the more relevant the more the content of the blog is high quality all the links that the blog by itself obtains, are links that affects all the site, therefore also the "standard" part of it, helping its rankings