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In light of the all round astonishment I went and checked the actual numbers, rather than off the top of my head - it was 44% removed.

So still way better than I'd expected.

Have to say I haven't done it your way round - we've completed three rounds of email outreach then submitted a disavow file, so I don't want to guess to far on advisability of doing it the other way around.  For starters I've no idea how well / quickly Google handles domains removed from a disavow list.

Your first assumption needs comment though - every domain we're removing links from was from a spammy website (zero quality SEO directory), as a result of a submission package they bought years back before I joined.

We managed to get about 50% of the list removed from that email outreach process.  Granted one was a directory network with over 100 domains, but even counting their domains as one that we got about 40% success.

Around 10% responded with a demand for a fee - ranging from 99c to $50.  Clearly all those were instant place in disavow list

So to summarise I was really surprised how successful the email outreach part was - we'd been expecting next to nothing by way of response rate rather than around 50% success.

Even if you do it disavow first, hoping for a Penguin update in the next three weeks so the file is actioned prior to your season starting is a little optimistic!

Excellent response from Dana to which I can add only one thought:

What's their backlink profile like now?  Do many of their product pages have links to them?  Do any have a decent number of links?

If they 404 all those links it's going to hurt.  You know that already.

Some stats of how their backlink profile is going to be affected might also help your case.

We're seeing the same thing, but despite the page showing 2 of 5 active sites, correct number of keywords etc, the actual campaigns aren't appearing.

You can go back to the old moz by clicking the link at the top:  http://pro.moz.com/ where your existing campaigns should be showing as always.

I've been trying Bing for about the last two months.

Still early days, but we imported our Adwords campaign and it's thus far working really quite well - we're getting some good traffic at a lower level than adwords, and clicks work out cheaper.  Strangely our best performing key words on Google aren't turning out to be those doing best on Bing.  Still early days, but it is proving worthwhile.

Beyond that it would certainly be worth hearing someone out, but I'd be asking many questions on who's in their network etc.  Obviously you'll want to be reassured that any web properties they're showing ads on are relevant to your niche, and the right sort of visitors.

Unfortunately the only way to be sure with most forms of advertising is to throw a hundred pounds or two at it and see what happens!

It's all about link profile.

GoDaddy may appear to get away with site footer links on domain holding pages, but they have a massive link profile, not least of which they gained during the whole SOPA/PIPA outrage.

Chances are it's not harming their ranking overly much, but it certainly isn't helping it much either.

Whereas a small web designer with a site wide footer link on every site they create could well have those as the vast majority of the total links - leading to a heavily skewed and very unnatural link profile.

Now then I'm sure that some of the larger web design and service outfits got where they are with the help of site wide footer links, site widgets etc, but Google moved the goalposts so you can't take that route any more.

Depending if it's a one-off or recurring event, you could also include a summary of what took place, and some teaser copy for next year: "Look at what you missed, watch this space for the 2014 conference" or some such.

Otherwise 301 redirects are probably the way to go.

I think it's equally probable both are right!

There are SO many variables that making a clear case one way or the other is unlikely.  For example techies are unlikely to ever click ads - and for many even see them as they'd have AdBlock installed.  At the other extreme there's many non web literate folks (yes, even these days) who, frankly, haven't distinguished between ads and organic:  Top link = top answer.  Even if that link is an ad, or an injected ad due to the malware littering their PC.

In the middle there's a massive group who are aware, see ads and likely choose when / if to click ads.  Different intent will lead to different likelihood of clicking ads in different circumstances.  If searching for a product to buy I think most people will factor in sponsored results, at least at some point - perhaps organic didn't give the desired results, they want the widest range of products or companies to choose from so open every link, etc.

The Nielsen article seems to be talking more about branded search, certainly not money out searches, whilst the Wordstream infographic is talking of high commercial intent searches - ie money out searches.  Unfortunately their sources are a bit small to make out and aren't clickable so I can't look back further.

But given the difference in search intent between the two pieces I'd be comfortable with them both being right!

I suspect the answer is something along the lines of "soon" (tm) with a pinch of "when it's ready".

Having been in software far too long, the absolute worst thing they could do is unleash it as beta to us when it's still a little flakey or inconsistent.  Analytics that aren't consistent and correct are of marginal use (yes, ok I know about Google Analytics issues), and would probably generate a whole load of support requests - time that will be better served polishing and completing the service.  Would probably lead to a lot more questions along the lines of "are we nearly there yet?" too!

I'm sure there's a few carefully chosen alpha testers who are willing to put up with pain, compare with Google and other analytics and not rely on it for any sort of decision yet.

Me, I'm happy to wait until they think it's resilient, consistent and accurate enough to survive us, the great unwashed.

At which point I hope to be very happy to have the option to kick GA into touch.

Moz crawl your site weekly and any updates to duplicate content issues will get updated at that time.

The actual day it gets crawled varies depending on account I believe.  You can check when it's due in the Crawl Diagnostics section of the campaign overview.  At the bottom right you should see last crawl date and when next is due.

So any fixes you're making won't be reflected until the next Moz crawl.

Suspect it's just a wrinkle as a result of the change from seomoz to moz, but on seomoz the remember me checkbox had a time to live of a few weeks, possibly a month, which was excellent.

Since the great rebranding and migration (which is excellent by the way), time to live from ticking remember me is in the order of a couple of hours, which is pretty annoying.

Any chance the web folks could bump it up a little, better yet put it back to 30 days?  

It's also worth bearing in mind that if you submit your site to DMOZ some categories no longer have volunteers dealing with applications, so your submission may sit in the queue for the next several years going nowhere.  So even if it is important, it's not necessarily achievable  

So submit and then instantly forget about it and stop caring.

This week's crawl results were a little crazy for us too.

We dropped to 1 error (-171), and to 48 warnings (-538), yet most of the issues not reported this week are still most definitely there.  I guess roger was having a lazy week?  

If it's a blog post, people want to know they're dealing with a person.  Most people don't care who published the article, but do pay attention if it was written by someone they respect.  The mainstream media makes a horrible mess of technology reporting, often, but if I see a piece on security in the Guardian by Bruce Schneier I pay attention and read it - simply because I know he knows his topic.  So it is all about the people, rather than the brand - unless you're Coke or Cadbury etc where different rules can apply!

Your brand may publish good content, but it's actually the person who wrote it who is the authority and may be interesting to get to know - because they post funny stuff, have opinions on a range of topics etc, rather than be mono-dimensional banging on and on about the business.

People, in the main, want to connect on social networks to brands - Robert Scoble rather than Rackspace for example.  You'll have an easier time connecting with people as you than trying to represent your brand.  Now, you may not be an authority on any topic yet, but that's the background, and intent, of authorship.

The connection with your brand, and the fact you'll be sharing content from the page, and your blog etc, will promote your brand.  Do it too often and people will disconnect, so as ever, it's a fine art.

So where does that leave us, the nobodies who aren't world-reknowned for some topic?  It leaves us trying to create enough quality content, consistently enough, that both G+ and the serps start to see us as authorities on particular topics.  Reshares of overtly commercial messages seem to do especially badly on G+, perhaps because it's presently an advert-free zone.

The upshot of all this makes it very time-consuming, so if you're not putting in the xx hours daily on G+ connecting and interacting with as many as possible, no one will notice, and no one will care.  Which is the rather sad, and fundamental, flaw in authorship and G+: it's a popularity contest plain and simple and actually nothing to do with authority.  Perhaps a secondary indicator of, and there's certainly correlation...

So how to build that brand?  Be a social media maven, constantly interacting and connecting.  Do it as both you, and the page, along with other employees - they'll all have their own voice and style - which is ideal, they'll all connect to different people.  If you can't put several hours a day in, try and find a community or niche that you can join actively enough to get noticed and respected in, and build connections from there.

Do 20 minutes a day of resharing the latest daily blog post along with a tiny bit of interaction and you'll get precisely nowhere.

Good luck!

I've been trying Bing for about the last two months.

Still early days, but we imported our Adwords campaign and it's thus far working really quite well - we're getting some good traffic at a lower level than adwords, and clicks work out cheaper.  Strangely our best performing key words on Google aren't turning out to be those doing best on Bing.  Still early days, but it is proving worthwhile.

Beyond that it would certainly be worth hearing someone out, but I'd be asking many questions on who's in their network etc.  Obviously you'll want to be reassured that any web properties they're showing ads on are relevant to your niche, and the right sort of visitors.

Unfortunately the only way to be sure with most forms of advertising is to throw a hundred pounds or two at it and see what happens!

If they're in your industry it's not going to do you any harm.  But from a low authority site it's not going to a huge amount of good either!

So if it's going to take several hours of time to get them to agree to link, it's probably not worth the effort.  If it's a 10 minute of email back and forth, go for it.

Never discount a link if it's a company site though - it's not quite the same as a dodgy seo directory of everything - a directory is never going to get better authority for the page linking.  A company site may grow in stature as they work their own site and seo efforts, so in a year or two the link might have significantly more weight.

Likewise, never discount the human, rather than purely seo, value of a link - if it's a company in your industry, it might attract actual, interested, visitors.

I'd be tempted to hang fire a little while before "fixing" the problem, and give it a while longer to shake out.

We had something very similar around the time of Penguin 2 on one of our sites, and like you for only a selection of our keywords.  Half of the dropped keywords have returned to roughly where they were.  Of the other half most have increased, but are still down compared to pre-Penguin.

One keyword went from 3rd to not in top 50 and back to 4th this week.

Aside from burning a fair bit of time trying to figure out what was going on and if we'd been partially Penguined, I'm not sure I'm any the wiser!  Nothing notable going on with key competitors, nothing news worthy or topical in the sector - just temporary obliteration of around a quarter of keywords.

I suspect the answer is something along the lines of "soon" (tm) with a pinch of "when it's ready".

Having been in software far too long, the absolute worst thing they could do is unleash it as beta to us when it's still a little flakey or inconsistent.  Analytics that aren't consistent and correct are of marginal use (yes, ok I know about Google Analytics issues), and would probably generate a whole load of support requests - time that will be better served polishing and completing the service.  Would probably lead to a lot more questions along the lines of "are we nearly there yet?" too!

I'm sure there's a few carefully chosen alpha testers who are willing to put up with pain, compare with Google and other analytics and not rely on it for any sort of decision yet.

Me, I'm happy to wait until they think it's resilient, consistent and accurate enough to survive us, the great unwashed.

At which point I hope to be very happy to have the option to kick GA into touch.

I think it's equally probable both are right!

There are SO many variables that making a clear case one way or the other is unlikely.  For example techies are unlikely to ever click ads - and for many even see them as they'd have AdBlock installed.  At the other extreme there's many non web literate folks (yes, even these days) who, frankly, haven't distinguished between ads and organic:  Top link = top answer.  Even if that link is an ad, or an injected ad due to the malware littering their PC.

In the middle there's a massive group who are aware, see ads and likely choose when / if to click ads.  Different intent will lead to different likelihood of clicking ads in different circumstances.  If searching for a product to buy I think most people will factor in sponsored results, at least at some point - perhaps organic didn't give the desired results, they want the widest range of products or companies to choose from so open every link, etc.

The Nielsen article seems to be talking more about branded search, certainly not money out searches, whilst the Wordstream infographic is talking of high commercial intent searches - ie money out searches.  Unfortunately their sources are a bit small to make out and aren't clickable so I can't look back further.

But given the difference in search intent between the two pieces I'd be comfortable with them both being right!

It's a bit hacky, but you can 301 them simply.

Create a directory in place of the pdf called document.pdf or whatever, then inside that folder add a default index php (or whatever you're using) to 301 them from http://www.yourdomain.com/document.pdf/index.php to wherever the pdf now lives.