Welcome to the Q&A Forum

This is the process I use when I need to get control of the map listing:

1. Go to the listing page and click on "manage this page." If the button isn't there, click on "edit details" below the details section of the business.

2. This should bring you to a "Request for manager access" page, where you can fill out the information telling Google you are the owner, not the advertisers.

3. Now, if you don't want to wait a million years for anything to happen with the page, you can click on "contact us" at the top right corner of the page and have Google call you.

4. Tell a human at Google the problem and it's possible they will expedite the process.

5. Follow up with the human every few days. The Google human should give you a way to contact them directly through email.

The amount of time you need to wait varies widely depending on a lot of things. Google's John Muller said in a recent hangout that the disavowed links aren't all removed from the site at once. It's staggered based on when the links are recrawled and reindexed by the bots. This means you may not see a big jump after a few weeks or months, but instead gradually see improvement over time. Here is the hangout: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxqkqGyCaI4

As to the new bad links you've found, you can continue to update your disavow file with new bad links you find, there's no need to constantly submit reconsideration requests.

Consider deleting all of this:

Disallow: /&limit
Disallow: /?limit
Disallow: /&sort
Disallow: /?sort
Disallow: /?route=checkout/
Disallow: /?route=account/
Disallow: /?route=product/search
Disallow: /?route=affiliate/
Disallow: /?marca
Disallow: /&manufacturer
Disallow: /?manufacturer
Disallow: /?filter
Disallow: /&filter
Disallow: /?order
Disallow: /&order
Disallow: /?price
Disallow: /&price
Disallow: /?filter_tag
Disallow: /&filter_tag
Disallow: /?mode
Disallow: /&mode
Disallow: /?cat
Disallow: /&cat
Disallow: /?product_id
Disallow: /&product_id
Disallow: /?route=affiliate/
Disallow: /*?keyword

Those rules are telling Google not to crawl domain.com/EVERYTHING(then the URL parameter). This could be where the issue stems from. If you're worried about URLs with these things ranking, consider implementing canonical tags instead to point to the proper pages

Hi DJReason,

If you can manage to not have a pool of numbers for SEO traffic, my solution above will work. By using a script that only fires when certain parameters hit, it allows you to only use one number for non-parametered URLs, so search engine bots will only see the one number. Then you use that number during citation building, and you're golden... at least from that perspective.

It sounds like the URLs being used in the code aren't dynamic. There are two different ways to embed an image (and it's URL) on a page with html:

You can use a dynamic URL, where the domain will be whichever domain the page is on, like notice how there is no domain in front of the URL path, this means the domain will change depending on which website the code is on.

The other way, and the way it sounds like is being used on your site is This makes the URL definite, since all of it is defined. If you see that your images were put in with URLs like these, you'll need to make them dynamic to accomplish what you want to.

Charging on-page SEO at a per-page price is a bit out of the norm in my experience. Most SEO companies will charge a monthly fee and will then work on what they deem more important to the campaign.

Keeping that in mind, answering your question is difficult without the price points, but if it were me, internal linking would be part of the on-page service. If it's strictly a content company, they won't do this, but if it's an SEO company, internal linking is a given.

Once the content is complete, the internal linking that is involved is not a large undertaking in comparison. It takes some time and strategy, but a fraction of the content building efforts that hopefully took place.

It looks like there's a glitch in the markup on the REI website (or whichever 3rd party review software REI uses). Only one of the reviews on the website is being read and put into the snippet on Google. It looks like it might have been the first review given: a 1-star review by "dan hiker" from 4 years ago. Like the markup isn't being automated on each review after that one.

This looks like an issue on REI's side, and not an error with Google.

Usually it's at /locations.kml

The actual URL to the KML file is in the geositemap. You may not notice when you go to the URL, it's not an actual web page, it's a file that is downloaded when you enter the URL.

If the images are coded into the website using "http://example.com/image.jpg" instead of "/image.jpg" then the images will always pull from example.com, instead if your test site.

If they were coded with "/image.jpg" then the code would pull from example.com when the page was there, and example.yoursite.com when you moved it over for testing.

I hate to step on another SEO's business modal, but for that price they should absolutely include the internal linking. I would be weary of an SEO that is trying to break down every single process into it's smallest parts in order to charge you for each one.

At an average reputable SEO company, that $7k would go a lot further, I feel.

This is just my opinion. When it comes to pricing a services, everyone does it differently and charges different things. So, in my opinion, you are getting nickeled and dimed.

Matt Cutts covered this a couple months ago. Depending on the query you used, Google reserves the right to change the title based on what they believe would be better for users. Is it actually better for users? We may never know, but that's how things are right now. I linked the Cutts video below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3HX_8BAhB4

Once the file is downloaded, open it with a txt editor. You should see your company's information and coordinates.

First things first: before you start working on optimizing the new site, I would work on resolving the issue with the old partner, since this is an issue that can continue to haunt you for a long time if you don't.

The old partner needs to 301 redirect all pages in your client's subdirectory to the new site. Offer to send him the steps needed to do this. If he refuses, let him know that he does not own the data from your client's side of the old website, and you will therefor be forced to send DMCA takedown requests to the server company and to him for straight-up copyright infringement. Once he cooperates and puts in the proper 301s, you will have much less to worry about.

Unless, for some reason, the old partner does own the data, in which case, you shouldn't be using it on the new site.

A disavow report is a must. Also make sure there's no manual action message in Webmasters that may require a reconsideration request.

Definitely contact all the webmasters to request removal and document the requests, they will be useful for the reconsideration if needed.

If it was a bot, it seems like there would be a lot more than 5 links a week. A number that low looks more like someone manually adding things, which could be a sign of negative SEO tactics by a competitor (if it's not an SEO company you hired that is just bad at their job).

How old is the website? It's possible it hasn't been indexed yet. If the site is more than a couple months old, then that isn't the issue. For some reason Google isn't indexing your website.

When you say "exact" URL when you search, are you including the ".com" in there? Your URL without the ".com" will pull up other website that rank better than yours. IF that's not the case, there are several other potential causes, including robots tags on the pages, duplicate or thin content, a robots.txt file, etc. If you haven't yet, add your site to Google Webmasters and see if you can gain any insights there.

You can try, but it'll probably be more a hassle than it's worth. Even if you're in the right, imagine syncing up all citations with your G+ account, then then Google decides to change your business name on their own, or they unverify you until you change the name. Sure, you might be able to talk a Google rep into reverfiying... until the next guy sees it and does the same thing.

Even if you're in the right. This might be an uphill battle not worth fighting.

Then send a DMCA to the server company. The server company doesn't care that he's a lawyer, and I bet your client and send a very well written one.

Besides that, you're strategy moving forward seems pretty sound.

I have seen this done in order to help screen readers, but I definitely do not recommend this. They may argue that semantic rules of HTML 5 dictate that this is an okay practice, and it is for HTML 5, but not for Google.

Google doesn't adopt new rules or semantic changes right away. Changes have to take hold and become common practice. This isn't common enough, and hidden H1s do open you up for potential penalties.

So the website itself is being redirected? This has the potential is get it removed from the index.  A 301 redirect tells search engines that the site has moved permanently, which means you're recommending they not index it, since it's not there anymore.

Also make sure to submit a sitemap to Google Webmasters to see if there are any errors there.

Any word on if Google is using those reviews less in the local ranking algorithm?

I have a client who has an average 4 stars on most sites, but had a much lower score on Yelp. Last night, he spiked in maps for some big keywords, almost like Yelp wasn't being considered anymore.