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Maybe so. I'll have to find out from our web team. Thanks!

Things like this can be a little tricky to dissect anyway. Most important thing is that you're doing things right, it's just accounting for Google's ability to crawl.

Yes it does - thank you!

Thanks Chris. I plan to move forward. God I hope I don't ever have to do this again.

Hi Sarah You will end up with two Google + pages, One Google Business Page and also a Google+ Page. The Google Business page is very important as this is the one that will be verifyed to your website and old Google Places pages.  It is very very confusing.  All our posts on Google Plus go to our page and not to our Business and there is no way to join the too Google have just launched a new update which starts to map locally to Business pages via local search, for example Timberyard London.  This then also brings in all your Google+ Business info, maps etc. Join a few of the groups and recommended is "Google+ Resource", you have to request to join and they are really helpful.  Create circles and share content from your sites via G+ on your site. Google Plus is very much part of Google search too, so if members of your circles are logged into Google plus too, then when you post, you posts up in any related search results, normally quite high on page 1. Worth researching and learning more to get the most out of G+, as it looks like it is going to be very important in Googles effort to keep content fresh, new and unique.

Hi Ira, That's correct that we would expect to see the data we push to our 7 supported partners then be pushed out to their own partners (see Local Search Ecosystem for US: http://moz.com/learn/local/local-search-data-us) but this is not something we monitor or guarantee. We monitor and guarantee pushing your data to the 7 partners, but do not track what happens beyond that point. Also, when you create a Moz Local account we do provide some additional info about listings on several non-partner platforms, like Google, Bing, Facebook, Yahoo, Hotfrog, YP and Yelp. If our tool is pointing out that a business doesn't yet have a listing on one of these platforms, or that a listing could be improved by cleaning up NAP inconsistencies or adding additional details like photos or categories, we are specifically recommending that you take manual action to improve your overall listing score. Hope this helps!

Thanks! I had mistaken the branding page for our HQ page, so I really feel like I messed up. Oh welp, time to research how to do it and get started! Many thanks.

Thanks guys! Trying to get to the next level, and this looks like a fantastic tool.

Agreed. Besides, maybe someone (a newbie like me!) with the same question could see how I figured it out, then try it on their own. Or someone can see what I did and say "wait, that's not right ... ". I think it comes from my mentality of not to wanting waste people's time on questions I found the answer to - but, yes, we wouldn't want to punish the people putting time into answering, especially when it can help someone else. Thanks for bringing that up, Keri!

I'm not in the tool, so I'll leave that to those in the know. However, to clarify you can still do free basic listings. So maybe that's what they're doing, and that's what you're seeing. I'm referring to whether I should pay for listings so that I can get the specialized attention I need for 70 locations that are giving me grief. So it's within that frame that we are weighing whether they carry enough influence to be worth it.

That's what I've been doing, Matt. No, not a silly answer. Maybe a silly question.

lol... Yes, but you can do BOTH.

How similar/different are these products? Are they marketed to slightly different audiences? Do they have slightly different uses? Or are the essentially the same product but one is blue and the other is black? If they can be marketed to different groups or have a big enough difference that they should be separate pages then I'd consider doing some research and copywriting to add unique, relevant content to each to set them apart. If they're really too similar then determine whether they definitely need to be on separate pages still or if the could be merged. If they can be merged, choose which on stays live, update the page as needed and 301 the old page to the one still live. If they definitely need to stay on separate pages still despite being so similar, consider canonicalizing one to the other.

Thanks Michael!

Sarah, I have been using this tool: www.spyfu.com , specifically their recon files application to do competitive key word research.  Once I extract key words form this report I use their Keyword smart search tool. Hope this helps, Ron

Absolutely; you should implement it anyway. Even if Authorship doesn't turn out to be as important as it was first thought it would be, it is another signal to Google.

Thanks! Oh, it's not a break-break. It was just a mental one over the weekend LOL!

Thanks Takeshi! In your experience, were you using the older or newer version? Have you had any experience with the Cloud? I think the point of contention on our team is whether it's worth the investment initially since we don't know what sort of reception it would get. They are thinking of slating it until post-redesign and after we see how active the community is. On the other hand, since we're about to embark on the redesign, we're wondering if we would save a lot of headache and cost if we just implemented it from the get-go instead of trying to retrofit it later. I'm going to bring these questions on a conference call Thursday with them, but if anyone has any insight here - I'm all ears! Thank you!

Thank you EGOL. That's a common theme I hear - start small, trial and error. As for costs and expenses .... it remains to be seen. I'm on the ground level in terms of both the new products and digital advertising in general. Right now I'm doing preliminary research for the benefit of our budget next year, which is how I ended up tinkering around in there and realizing I'm going to need some deeper-level training.

SEO Sarah, I'm also considering WordTracker, and was wondering... now that it's been about a year since you posted this... have you found it useful?  If not... what did you do instead?