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Here is how you get the highlighting done where character is >140

1. Goto new rules in Conditional formatting dropdown

2. Select "use a formula to determine which cell to format"

3. In the edit section under "format value where formula is true" give following:

=len(A1)>140

and then select custom formatting (fill color)

Now simply use format painter option to fill the complete column (all individual cells) with this formatting

*Note I am using Excel 2010

If you hide the address in Google Places account, Google will remove all instances from public view whether in Google Place page. It will only show this address to you when logged-in

Unfortunately there is nothing you can do to speed-up the process especially when Google Places is having some real troubles in managing data these days.

Technically you can delete the old files if the redirect is in place correctly.

However, do test it out after you delete the pages to ensure that everything is fine. You can use Google WMT's 'Fetch as Googlebot' to know the exact response Google gets.

I will say that you should worry about traffic and not PageRank with the change you intend to make.

If you implement the 301 redirect correctly from old URLs to new, you should be on the same traffic levels within a month (maximum) after this change. However, the double check if the redirect are working properly from the time of switch.

There is no limit to number of 301 redirect that you can add however, avoid and chain redirect like

Page  A >> Page B >> Page C

Only issue that you might face is increased server latency with so many redirects in the htaccass (if you are using this method to redirect) as for every request this file will be scanned for a possible redirect. An alternate can be that you keep the old pages on the site and do a php script 301 redirect  at page level which will be time taking as you might have to manually update the code of each page. Note that the script should be at the very beginning of the page so Google crawls it first and moves on. With this method you can ensure that page speed is not affected for the pages where no redirects are added.

You can choose any of the platforms on a self hosted domain.

What you should be focusing on is the quality of content. The content should be unique with your thoughts and inferences/inputs even if it is about a generic topic that can add value to the users. Also, share your posts and participates in discussions on social communities to create a buzz as as as gain authority as an author in the respective niche. This is the only way forward if you want to future proof it from Google's algorithmic changes.

Depending upon the domain authority you can have sitelinks for multiple internal pages. We have extended sitelinks for many of our brand terms where one of the category page ranks on top along with 6 sub-categories pages as sitelinks.

With proper SEO strategy, you can have sitelinks for your client's different location specific pages.

"Fetch as GooleBot" gives you the details that Google will fetch from your source code (no ajax code will appear for instance)  along with server response code.

If you want to see how your page will show in SERP's preview you need to use the tool "Instant Previews" under Labs section of the Google webmaster tool.

As per Google, depending upon the user-agent you should display the website. So, for Googlebot-mobile only mobile site remains visible and for Googlebot (desktop) only desktop site is shown. Google preaches adding a 301 redirect to mobile version depending upon user-agent detection. Find complete article here:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/02/making-websites-mobile-friendly.html

This change should solve your current issues with the rankings

The above rel canonical on the page is perfectly fine. They should not be reason for your ranking drop and can be left untouched. However, make sure that all pages have canonical set as respective page URLs.

These are generally added give a directive to search engines about the one version of URL to be indexed. Reasons for the same can be numerously like reducing duplicate content on the site (especially ecommercce site) to ensuring the link value passes to main URL where people link to your pages using utm parameters.

You can read more about canonical tags here: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394

To answer your specific question, a lot of times Google displays algo created title tags if it believes that the one supplied by the webmaster is not good enough or does not contain the query term being searched for.

If Google is changing the title tag even when the search term is present in the title you have mentioned on the page then you might consider changing it and making it more meaningful. Having said that, there is no guarantee that Google will pick and display your changed title even if it matches the search term and is grammatically correct and good to read.

With Google coming down heavily on spam sites with first Panda and now Penguin, I will not suggest to have the repetition of the keyword twice on the main domain name as you never know this type of spam might be the next in line on Google's list.

My suggestion would be to try and work your way in becoming a brand for the niche you want to target as that will be the future and all other scheme to fool the engines will eventually die.

Getting links from directories like Yohoo and BOTW are not considered paid links by Google due to their authority and also because the amount they charge is towards editorial fee and they still reserve the right to reject any spam site.

Having said that, due to recent changes in the way Google uses incoming links in determining ranking these links might have no to little effect in rankings. They still might get some direct traffic.

Since, the brand name was Ross & Bute earlier, it might actually take some time before Google can pick the change in brand name especially if the site had a lot of authority and links coming from authority sites with "And". Having said that you can try some of the following to speed up the process:

1. Press Release in Big PR sites talking about the change in name

2. Contacting and getting the anchor changed for already created brand links

3. Getting Yahoo, Business and other directory links updated

4. and wait for Google to pick up the changes

By default the geographic targeting it set as blank (no targeting) with United States option greyed out (unchecked). It might have got set if someone had accidentally clicked the checked button (if they did not do it intentionally) as there is not other way to set it.

AFAIK Google recognizes these change almost immediately however, impact on rankings/gtraffic can take upto 1-2 months.

The script you have added is perfectly fine. Also, there is no harm in adding the canonical especially if have added analytics tracking parameters on the links whether internal or external. This helps in ensuring that all links point to page without parameters.

I am assuming that SEOmoz must be giving NOTICE and not reporting it as an ERROR which is perfectly fine.