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If you shoot me a PM I'll send you the site url.

After examining the larger rental sites I decided to proceed with 301'ing all the /rental-type/ directories to /rentals/ because they all appear to rely on user filtering search results rather than pre-filtered search results via urls. As we discussed previously, I think the pros outweigh the cons - but what do I know?!...

I definitely have a growing expired listing 301 problem then - each day roughly 10k listings are removed and their urls 301 to the search results for the city that the rental was located in. Should I switch the 301 to a 404 and serve the city search results the same as I do now?

I submitted a reconsideration request last week and received the "No manual spam actions found" message back.

Should I 301 redirect the /rentals-type/* directories in the single /rentals/* and allow users to filter rental type in the search results -or- keep those pages and rel=canonical them to the /rentals/?

For listings that are no longer active (ie. rented) should we 404 those urls? We currently 301 them to the state/city searches results that the listing was located in.

Until 1 hour ago our site also allowed people to navigation into every city within every state whether we had rentals in those city/states or not. I've removed all of those pages and 301'd the urls to the main state pages which only display the cities where we have rentals. That change removed about 1500 unique urls.

Thank you again for being so helpful!! I actually tried PM'ing you but your username wouldn't come up.

Thanks for the insight Dr. Meyers!!

Here's a little more information - my site's homepage is a PR5, I roughly have 225k rental listings and Google has indexed roughly 500k urls - combo of search results & listing pages.

I proceeded with changing the listing url structure from "domain.com/123456" to "domain.com/property/987-street-city-state-zip-123456" and 301'd the old format to the new. I know this probably had nothing to do with my traffic drop, but it's a change I've been planning to make and figured there's no better time than now.

My hunch is that my search result pages are the thin content culprits because I have them setup 2 ways:

• domain.com/rentals/state/city/ which returns all listings that match the search location- domain.com/apartment-rentals/state/city/ which returns all apartment listings that match the search location

It's completely possible to produce 2 very similar search results (however with different title, h1, etc.) via these 2 search urls. Do you think I should 301 the /rental-type/state/city/ to /rentals/state/city/? If needed, I can privately send you me site's url.

Glad you mentioned pagnation - all 2nd+ page result pages include the following meta tag:

<meta name="<a class="attribute-value">robots</a>" content="<a class="attribute-value">noindex</a>" />

And the on-page pagnation links look like - 2nd page result shown:

<div id="<a class="attribute-value">pagination</a>"> <a href="[?pos=0&min=0&max=999999&beds=0&baths=0&pets=&pics=&sortby=min_rent&orderby=asc](view-source:http://www.rentalsource.com/rentals/california/carson/?pos=0&min=0&max=999999&beds=0&baths=0&pets=&pics=&sortby=min_rent&orderby=asc)" rel="<a class="attribute-value">prev</a>">&laquo; preva>
<a href="[?pos=0&min=0&max=999999&beds=0&baths=0&pets=&pics=&sortby=min_rent&orderby=asc](view-source:http://www.rentalsource.com/rentals/california/carson/?pos=0&min=0&max=999999&beds=0&baths=0&pets=&pics=&sortby=min_rent&orderby=asc)">1a>
<span class="<a class="attribute-value">selected_page</a>">2span>
<a href="[?pos=20&min=0&max=999999&beds=0&baths=0&pets=&pics=&sortby=min_rent&orderby=asc](view-source:http://www.rentalsource.com/rentals/california/carson/?pos=20&min=0&max=999999&beds=0&baths=0&pets=&pics=&sortby=min_rent&orderby=asc)">3a>
<a href="[?pos=30&min=0&max=999999&beds=0&baths=0&pets=&pics=&sortby=min_rent&orderby=asc](view-source:http://www.rentalsource.com/rentals/california/carson/?pos=30&min=0&max=999999&beds=0&baths=0&pets=&pics=&sortby=min_rent&orderby=asc)">4a>
<a href="[?pos=40&min=0&max=999999&beds=0&baths=0&pets=&pics=&sortby=min_rent&orderby=asc](view-source:http://www.rentalsource.com/rentals/california/carson/?pos=40&min=0&max=999999&beds=0&baths=0&pets=&pics=&sortby=min_rent&orderby=asc)">5a>
<a href="[?pos=20&min=0&max=999999&beds=0&baths=0&pets=&pics=&sortby=min_rent&orderby=asc](view-source:http://www.rentalsource.com/rentals/california/carson/?pos=20&min=0&max=999999&beds=0&baths=0&pets=&pics=&sortby=min_rent&orderby=asc)" rel="<a class="attribute-value">next</a>">next &raquo;a>
div>

Do you see any issues with this setup?

I've also made a few other changes since my last message:

• used linkdetox.com to analyze my backlinks and submitted a disavow request for the "toxic" ones
• purchased a "Site Audit" from Alexa and it came back with a 96/100 score
• contacted a recommended SEO firm and they want $5k per month for 6 months to fix my problem

Thank you to both of you for your prompt replies.

It appears there was some type of Google change on May 8, but according to Matt Cutts it wasn't Penguin related:
http://searchengineland.com/if-that-was-a-google-update-you-felt-googles-not-confirming-it-158925

My concern with splitting the rental type results across multiple directories is that I could be creating a lot thin content pages:
domain.com/townhouse-rentals/maryland/baltimore/

as opposed to:
domain.com/rentals/maryland/baltimore/

I should note that the /rentals/state/city/ URLs currently exists/works on my site and I added the /rental-type/state/city/ URLs a few years ago to leverage the keyword in the directory name, title & H1 tags. My site did perform quite well with that structure for multiple years. If I did make the change I would 301 the /rental-type/* directories to /rentals/*.

I've purchased the Alexa site audit and Screaming Frog software to analyze my site. Google Webmaster Tools doesn't report any site issues and I haven't received any messages from Google. Should I submit a reconsideration request?

As for the listing URLs, in my original message I mistyped the proposed directory - I meant:
domain.com/rental/123456-123-Street-City-State-Zip

I've been running a large real estate rental website for the past few years and on May 8, 2013 my Google traffic dropped by about 50%. I'm concerned that my current url structure might be causing thin content pages for certain rental type + location searches.

My current directory structure is:
domain.com/home-rentals/california/
domain.com/home-rentals/california/beverly-hills/
domain.com/home-rentals/california/beverly-hills/90210/
domain.com/apartment-rentals/california/
domain.com/apartment-rentals/california/beverly-hills/
domain.com/apartment-rentals/california/beverly-hills/90210/
etc..

I was thinking of changing it to the following:
domain.com/rentals/california/
domain.com/rentals/california/beverly-hills/
domain.com/rentals/california/beverly-hills/90210/

** Note: I'd provide users the ability to filter their results by rental type - by default all types would be displayed.

Another question - my listing pages are currently displayed as:
domain.com/123456

And I've been thinking of changing it to:
domain.com/123456-123-Street-City-State-Zip

Should I proceed with both changes - one or the one - neither - or something else I'm not thinking of?

Thank you in advance!!