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I just learned something great by investigating your question. Let me share it with you, (and maybe answer your question while I'm at it).

I searched Google for "Personalized Cutting Broads & Humidors" to see if I see the same thing as you do, and I do, so I clicked through to https://www.etsy.com/shop/TaylorCraftsEngraved to see what's going on. When viewing the source on that page we can see that the title tag is:

<title>Personalized Cutting Boards & Humidors by TaylorCraftsEngraved</title>

Notice that the word "Etsy" isn't there at all. First, I thought Google was giving Etsy special treatment - after all, they're a huge site. Then I noticed this:

That's an Open Graph tag. Based on that I'm guessing that Google is adding the Site Name Open Graph property to the end of the title that they display. I may have to go add an og:site_name tag to my site today.

Like Mary, I'm not a guru, but don't think it'll harm your SEO, but:

• What does Google display for these sites? If the
  is displaying in search results, that's 4 of your precious characters wasted that could be used to convince people to click on your site.
• What do browsers do when they encounter a
  in a title tag? It might get kind of ugly up in the tab or title bar.

TL;DR: If you can get rid of them I would.

Have you checked for a manual penalty in webmaster tools? I don't think that's the problem, but it's worth a look.

My hunch is that you have a duplicate content problem. I haven't been SEO-ing for years, so I'm not familiar with what Google does in certain situations, but https://www.credible.com/refinance-student-loans and https://www.credible.com/student-loans are relatively similar: The testimonials are identical, the list of lenders is similar, and the structure of the two pages is nearly the same. I realize that one page is about getting a student loan in the first place, and the other is about refinancing, but I wonder if Google isn't making that distinction - especially since you're getting caught in the "we have omitted some entries very similar to the ... already displayed" filter.

Maybe someone else can chime in here too to confirm or deny the change. FWIW the two pages linked above were recently indexed by Google - March 14 and 13 respectively.

This is a tough question. I had something similar happen - a lot of distributed traffic, that wasn't real but looks real-ish. I don't remember the screen sizes we had, but it was mostly old-ish versions of IE.

Since the main action people do on our site is Search, we added a ReCaptcha after people search a certain number of times. We also found some paths the spammers take through the site and created some controls to block, or Captcha, those paths. It's a tough balance, though, because you don't want to ban real users from the site.

Could you use some JS to inspect the browser, then set a cookie? Then your server-side could look for the cookie on subsequent requests and send them to /stop-eating-my-bandwidth-you-jerk.html or a more business-friendly equivalent.

What do you mean by "Without Pre-Rendering"?

Google says they can now index some Javascript content. I believe they're using actual browsers, or something very similar, to index web pages. Depending on how true this is, there's a chance they'll index anything you have hidden away in Javascript.

You can use the "Fetch as Google" tool in Webmaster Tools to see what the Googlebot sees. I just ran a test on my site and it does render Javascript. On my site some page elements appear in a different place with Javascript disabled, and in Google's render of the page they appear in the Javascript-enabled location. If you have actual content in the Javascript I don't know what Google will do with it, but they can at least see the result of your Javascript.

For more on 301s, read "301 Redirects: The Horror That Cannot Be Uncached." It's not quite true that they can't be uncached, but it's incredibly difficult to do so. From a UI standpoint, if someone has a cottage they like, and has bookmarked the URL, then one day they visit the URL and get a 301, their browser will cache that 301 for months, even if the URL comes back and starts returning a 200 with content.

I don't believe Google will make a selection for each option in a drop-down, even if they're able to see it. The traditional wisdom is to also provide ways to click to each location - so, somewhere there should be a link to each state, then you can have URLs like /bands/arizona and show the bands in Arizona.

I also have a search-based interface, and I do OK, but our short-term plans include a way to click through to each location without submitting a search form - it should help Google find our content.

I think you have a few options:

In the Titles & Metas section Yoast uses a sort of templating system. So if you go to the Post Types tab and remove %%sep%% and %%sitename%% from the Title Template under the "Posts" heading, (probably the first one), you'll be removing the "| Parker Staffing Services" from all of your Posts. You can do the same for Pages, Media, and any Custom Post Types you have installed on that tab.

The other tabs are similar. Taxonomies is just a scary word for Categories, Tags, and things that behave like categories & tags, and has nothing to do with stuffed animals like it looks like. If you go that tab you'll see a lot of the Title Templates end in %%sep%% %%sitename%% so you can remove those as well, if you want. That'll take the "| Parker Staffing Services" off of the Tag & Category archive pages, (pages like example.com/category/new-staff). The Archives tab works the same way. If you're worried about messing things up, a quick hack is to take a screenshot before changing anything, or do a database backup.

You can also override these templates on a per-post/page/CPT basis using Yoast SEO metabox, (that's what WP calls the boxes in the admin), on the Edit Post/Page/CPT screen in the admin. The Yoast SEO metabox is usually right below the box you write your actual content in, but it may be forced down depending on what plugins you have installed. If you don't see it at all click the "Screen Options" tab in the top right of the screen, it'll slide down and show you a bunch of checkboxes, where you should be able to make the Yoast SEO metabox visible. In the Yoast SEO metabox, click the title in the Snippet Preview, and the snippet editor will magically appear, letting you edit the title tag & meta description for that page only.

Hopefully that helps.

I just did s search for Hayley Kiyoko, and Google asked me which song is my favourite from her new album.

Is this a new thing? I've never asked Google a question before and had it ask me something back, other than "did you mean... (the correct spelling for what I was looking for)?"

u6qYnwq.png

We have search on our site, using the URL, so we might have: example.com/location-1/service-1, or example.com/location-2/service-2. Since we're a directory we want these pages to rank.

Sometimes, there are no search results for a particular location/service combo, and when that happens we show an advanced search form that lets the user choose another location, or expand the search area, or otherwise help themselves. However, that search form still appears at the URL example.com/location/service - so there are several location/service combos on our website that show that particular form, leading to duplicate content issues.

We may have search results to display on these pages in the future, so we want to keep them around, and would like Google to look at them and even index them if that happens, so what's the best option here? Should we rel="canonical" the page to the example.com/search (where the search form usually resides)? Should we serve the search form page with an HTTP 404 header? Something else?

I look forward to the discussion.

Try enabling it. I think that if it's disabled, Yoast SEO won't do anything to your title tags, so they'll just be the WordPress default, which is usually "Postname | Sitename." My hunch is that enabling that setting will put Yoast to work and both your settings in Titles & Metas will be respected, and your overrides in the metabox will be as well.

Once it's enabled check the source again, you'll know right away, (before Google or Moz has a chance to get in there and punish you if it's the wrong thing to do).

I've noticed that Google Plus seems to have a larger influence on ranking than other social networks, especially for one of our competitors. We haven't started using Google Plus, and I'm wondering if, from an SEO standpoint, it's worth putting energy into after last month's changes.

TL;DR: After last month's changes, is Google Plus still an important ranking signal?

Your'e right, ideally these URLs would not exist until needed. The problem I have is that our search is set up so it doesn't require an HTTP Post to the server - it works by manipulating the URL, so if someone searches for Service 5 at Location 1, the URL /location-1/service-5 has to present them with something - we're using a search form, but a signup form would work well too, and I think there is some limited use to the user to say "no, we don't have anything here."

I guess I could rebuild the page somewhat to make the "There are no results for Service 5 at Location 1" message bigger - it could even be in the Title / H1, then show my re-search or signup form - that would get rid of duplicate title tag problems, but my content would still essentially be the same - a form - so I'd have duplicate content problems.

Noindex would be a good idea, and easy to do. Do you know how easy it is to un-noindex later? As in, if I remove the noindex meta tag or header, how long will it take search engines to pick up on the change?

These URLs are in my sitemap too, and I should try to get rid of them there, but checking if there are search results in each location when building the sitemap is going to kill the webserver

I'm a bit surprised that the override in the metabox isn't being respected 100%, but I haven't played with the manual overrides much. Are you using a full-page caching plugin, like WP Super-Cache? If so you might have to clear the cache's contents to see the changes.

I think the problem should go away because you edited the Titles & Meta settings, but you can check right away. Do you know how to read HTML, at least sort of? Look at the page's source, (in Chrome: View > Developer > View Source), and look to see what's between the <title>and</title> tags - they will be fairly near the top, (you can Ctrl+F in View Source to find them). That's the title tag that we're trying to change, so if "| Parker Staffing Services" is gone, Moz, (and maybe Google), will be happy, then it's just a case of waiting for Moz & Google to re-crawl your site to see the changes.

If that doesn't work, and you don't want to set the site name to something shorter, there's a way to do it with PHP. I believe Yoast SEO passes the title tag through a WordPress filter before outputting it to the page. You can hook on to that filter and replace "| Parker Staffing Services" with an empty string. This is a bit overkill, though - you should be able to solve the problem in the admin interface.

There's a business I work with as a web dev that has 2 nearly identical sites - one for their E-commerce business and the other for their local business. I haven't done a full SEO analysis on the sites, but I can tell you it's not working out well SEO-wise - they're pretty buried, and I would bet quite a bit it's because of duplicate content.

If the two restaurants are truly different, each should have its own website, with its own content, on its own domain. If the only difference is the street address then there should be 1 website with a "locations" page showing how to get to each location. If they're a bit different but share a name, I would build single website, but have a page, or couple of pages about each location, (so, I would have location-specific info in a folder, eg. restaurant.com/location2/the-chef). Does that make sense?

If this is a brand new website, at a new URL, for a new business, (or a business that has never had a website before), then I would use a new UA. If this is a redesign, and the old website is going away, I would use the same UA - then you'll be able to track what the new design did for you.

I'm fairly new, so take this with a grain of salt but:

1. I expect the PA might improve over time, although I can't be sure. Also remember that Moz doesn't update in realtime, so even if Google figures out what's going on and gives you credit, it might take a week or two to show up in Moz.

2. (I'm more confident on this answer) It'll take time. Nothing in SEO is instant, in my experience. Also, if the huge publication picked it up & linked to you, you'll probably get a bunch of other copy-cat links.

You could add some more yard/garden-related stuff, especially if you can feature sculptures or metal art similar to what your client is selling, (bonus points if a product she sells is actually used in a garden). If you start now-ish, it's even seasonal!

In addition to what Matt said, make sure you're using a 301 redirect to redirect from the non-www version of your site to the www version. I'm pretty sure WordPress does this on its own, but you can check:

1. Open a new tab in your browser
2. Open the Developer Tools, (in Chrome it's Cmd/Ctrl + Alt/Option + i, or View > Developer > Developer Tools).
3. Click the "Network" tab of the developer tools.
4. Turn on recording by clicking the grey circle at the left of the bar that says things like "Preserve log" and "Disable Cache"
5. Check the "Preserve Log" checkbox
6. Type http://mefco.co.nz/news (without the www, but with the HTTP - this will ensure the initial request goes to the non-www URL), into the browser and press enter.
7. A bunch of stuff will fly by - scroll back to the top, you're looking for the first request, in Chrome it'll just say "news" because that's the final part of your URL, but if you mouse over it you'll see the whole URL.
8. Check the response code on that request, if it's 301 you're fine, if it's 302 you'll want to update that somewhere. If you use Yoast SEO maybe that can handle it, or you can do it in your .htaccess file. I've attached a screenshot showing a request to http://moz.com, you can see there's a 301 redirect - in this case to https://moz.com - the address is a bit different, but it's the same principle.

I thought of something while I was writing this, so I checked for you, and found:

• http://mefco.co.nz/news DOES use a HTTP 301 redirect to http://www.mefco.co.nz/news
• http://mefco.co.nz DOE NOT always use a HTTP 301 redirect to http://mefco.co.nz (I seem to sometimes get the redirect and sometimes not, I'm not sure if it's browser caching giving it to me or if your server sometimes returns it - you may have to use an incognito window, or clear your cache, or both, to see it, as 301 responses are notoriously hard to un-cache from browsers).

Does the non-/news section of the site use the same WP install? If only part of the URL is redirecting I imagine that Google & Moz may be slightly confused.

X4Gtwh4.png

I'm still learning about refresh rates & the inner workings of Moz - today I learned a bit more, thanks Matt.

That's not so horrible - it just says not to crawl the plugins directory or the admin, and to delay a second between requests. You probably don't want your plugins or admin directories being indexed, and according to this old forum post Google ignores the crawl-delay directive, so the robots.txt isn't the problem.

Are you running a CMS? If so maybe it has one built-in or available as a plugin - for example the Yoast SEO plugin on WordPress will create a sitemap, has plenty of inclusion & exclusion rules, (including a per-page override), and helps you do a bunch of other stuff too. I'm most other CMSs have something available by now.

If it's a custom-built dynamic site maybe your development team, (or developer), can add sitemap functionality. If you have a lot of pages, backed by a custom database, the best way to make sure your sitemap is up to date will be to generate it based on your data, not let some 3rd-party tool follow links around your site - Google can do that already!

If you are not running a CMS, or a custom app, how many pages do you have? It might be easiest to write the XML sitemap by hand, (although I'm a developer, so that's easy for me to say), or try out Logan's recommendation.

I don't know why this is happening, but this is what I would check:

• Do you see any crawl errors in the Google Search Console?
• If you search for your site on Google, what do you see, (does your snippet look normal)?
• How many pages does Google say it has indexed? Is it possible it's indexed everything and is taking a break, (does it even do that?)

One theory is: When you moved to the non-www version of the site, Google started getting 301s redirecting it from www to non-www, and now that you've gone back to www it's getting 301s redirecting it from from non-www to www, so it's got a circular redirect.

Here's what I would do to try to kick-start indexing, if you haven't already:

• Make sure you have the "Preferred Domain" set to the www version of your site in both the www and non-www versions of your site in Google Search Console.
• In the Search Console for the www-version of your site, re-submit your sitemap.
• In the Search Console for the www-version of your site, do a Fetch as Google on your homepage, and maybe a couple of other pages, and when the Fetch is done use the option to submit those pages for indexing, (there's a monthly limit on how much of this you can do).

Good luck!

Will the old pages continue to exist in the WP database? If so, I believe Yoast SEO has a place you can enter a URL to redirect to.

If the old pages will not exist, I prefer to add mod_rewrite RewriteRules to the .htaccess file. This way the webserver redirects the pages without having to initialize WordPress, so it can be a lot faster.

Also, depending on the Post Type WordPress sometimes does this on its own. I know it does for "Post" post types, but I don't know which others. Test your old URLs and see if they're redirecting to the new ones automatically. Make sure to test each kind of URL that has changed - Posts, Pages, Categories, Tags, and any Custom Post Types.

I'm not convinced that robots.txt is causing your problem, but it can't hurt to change it back. In fact, while looking for instructions on how to change it I came across this blog post by Joost de Valk, (aka Yoast), that pretty much says you should remove everything that's currently in your robots.txt - and his arguments are right for everything:

• Blocking wp-content/plugins will stop Google from loading JS and/or CSS resources that it might need to render the page properly.
• Blocking wp-admin is redundant, because the wp-admin if it's linked it can still be found, and important pages already have an X-Robots HTTP header that says not to index them.

If you're using Yoast SEO, here are instructions on how to change the robots.txt file.

If I do a search for "site:globecar.com truck" I see the page, so it's in the index.

However, what are you trying to rank for? Maybe the title should start with "Montreal Truck Rental" instead of "Montreal Truck & 4x4 Pick-Up Rental" - especially if you're trying to rank for the upcoming moving season.

The good news is that on my personalized search results for "montreal truck rental" your Atwater location is the first item in the local 3-pack, however, that might be because I rent cars from you sometimes - when I use the Mozbar to do a non-personalized search using Google.ca in Montreal you don't appear anywhere in the first couple of pages.

Do you have any messages, penalties, or warnings in Google Webmaster Tools?

I thought of one other possibility: Your sitemap.xml is probably auto-generated, so this shouldn't be a problem, but check to make sure that the URLs in the sitemap.xml have the www.

Other than that I'm out of ideas - I would wait a few days to see what happens, but maybe someone else with more experience watching Google will have seen this before. If it does resolve, I'd like to know what worked.

I'm implementing Schema.org, (JSON-LD), on an eCommerce site. Each product has a few different variations, and these variations can change the price, (think T-shirts, but blue & white cost $5, red is $5.50, and yellow is $6).

In my Schema.org markup, (using JSON-LD), in each Product's Offer, I could either have a single Offer with a price range, (minPricd: $5, maxPrice $6), or I could add a separate Offer for each variation, each with its own, correct, price set.

Is one of these better than the other? Why? I've been looking at the WooCommerce code and they seem to do the single offer with a price range, but that could be because it's more flexible for a system that's used by millions of people.