Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Rasmus,

Google has been doing this (changing your title tag) for a while now. Google doesn't normally just "guess" your brand name or website name, they usually get it from somewhere. I would try to find out where they are getting it from and see if you can change it there. As Andy suggests, if it's your WordPress blog, then there is a chance that they're taking it from your blog's title, and you should be able to change it.

Hi Brant,

It's always a good thing to be aware of all of the links pointing to your website. I would look at the Webmaster Tools link data, but realize that it's not necessarily going to give you all the links. I would also look at Open Site Explorer, Majestic SEO, and ahrefs links, as well. If you find there are links that you think are low quality, I would use the Disavow Tool to disavow them.

If there is a site that has copied your site, then consider filing a DMCA request with Google and the web host to get the content removed. You might look at your site's log files to see which IP addresses are hitting your site and getting the content and try to block it from happening.

Hi Huey,

What I would do is first look in Google to see if they're crawling and indexing all of your products. For example. search Google for this:

site:www.domain.com/getproduct.aspx

With that search you should see your products getting indexed. If not, then there is an issue. I don't recommend that you use any redirects at all, as Google can crawl and index URLs with parameters in them.

That said, you should not be using a 302 redirect as it's only temporary one and Google will NOT change the URL, as they are doing now. If you used a 301 Permanent Redirect Google should then show the full URL.

If at all possible, I recommend getting rid of the session IDs and cookies. If you must have them, then those session IDs should not be in the URLs. I would, though, get rid of them for the search engine crawlers at a minimum.

No, Google does not penalize you for having content that requires registration in order to view. As long as you give Googlebot full access to the content so that they can crawl it properly, it won't be an issue. There are plenty of sites doing this successfully, and they don't have any problems.

Denise, I don't think you have too much to worry about when it comes to duplicate content. Google's crawler, Googlebot, has a mobile version and a desktop version: so you should be serving Googlebot's mobile version your mobile content and vice versa for the 'normal' desktop Googlebot.

That should generally take care of most of the duplicate content issues. I would, though, go ahead and take a look at this 2011 video from Matt Cutts and the link in the description that talks about mobile duplicate content issues.

Dana,

Yes, Google has indexed the page. However, if you view the source code of the page you won't see any text of the customer reviews. Even if you view the cached version, there is text there: but it's not necessarily text on the page. If you view the cached version, and then see the source code of the page, again, the content is not there. The reviews are not there in the source code.

Let's take this one step further. Search Google for one of the testimonials or a part of one: "Marc Palermo is a great customer service" which is NOT indexed in Google.

Google sees the source code but doesn't appear to be indexing the content.

Jean-Francois,

If you want to accommodate the company asking for the link to be a 'nofollow' link, then that's fine. I would nofollow their link. If you have more than 50 links on the page, though, I would consider whether or not you need that page on the site at all or need to split it into several pages.

Linking out to appropriate on-topic sites will generally not hurt your site's rankings. But, keep in mind that you need to police those links to make sure that you're not linking out to any malicious sites.

Stephan,

When it comes to redirects, as long as the server returns a 301 Permanent Redirect when a page is requested, it doesn't matter absolutely whatsoever when it comes to SEO and rankings.

There are other considerations, though. If it's done at the registrar level, then it will inevitably lighten the load on the server. But, you generally won't notice a difference unless there's a large amount of traffic and a LOT of redirects involved (thousands of redirects, not just a few).

Sika22

Typically, when you come up with a URL structure, that URL structure should closely resemble the breadcrumb trail of your site. So, if you have something like www.domain.com/category/product1 then you should be able to go to www.domain.com/category/ and get a list of products.

It looks like the URL structure you're talking about is adding extra keywords, and that's not necessary.

Fiona,

Just to be clear, what you're referring to are subdomains, and not domains. You're right, though, there are definitely issues related to duplicate content that is going to cause ranking problems. Typically, Google will rank the content that they crawled first: the others will be the duplicates.

The best way to deal with this is to decide which subdomain you really want: which will typically be www.clientdomain.com and then 301 redirect all of the others to www.clientdomain.com.

If, however, there is unique content on the other subdomains, then you wouldn't want to redirect those.

Keith, there are a lot of factors that go into the actual search engine rankings that you and I see on the search results page. With the particular query "what is google voice", Google has decided that the MacWorld article, with a title of "what is google voice" is more appropriate for the query than the actual Google Voice page.

I would gather that from the query that the user is wanting an explanation of the product: they're not wanting to go to the Google Voice page itself. So, Google is showing the answer to the question rather than the actual site that they're asking about.

This also is a good example of Google Hummingbird at work, where they're able to understand the query better, and deliver better search results based on the actual query, not just look at "keywords".

Oren, Keri is right. Followerwonk has said that Facebook is a lot different from Twitter, and so you may not be able to get the same data.

At this point, I recommend looking at Google Ripples for posts on Google Plus, using the Explore tab, and also looking at info from sites like CircleCount.com. I have a feeling that Google is being very careful about the data and analytics that we can get for certain reasons. For example, as AuthorRank potentially comes into play, there's going to be certain info that they just don't want us to have access to.

Brad, ultimately you have to weigh the time involved in creating the spreadsheet(s) required, gathering the data, and then uploading, with the benefits. If the current data is correct, then it wouldn't hurt if you didn't take the time to upload the data.

However, keep in mind that if you're going to upload the data, then that will help with verification. So, since you've taken ownership of those listings, there's a better chance that you may rank better and show up more often in the search results because those are verified listings. This goes for Bing as well as Google.

So, yes, I do believe it is "worth it" to take the time to verify the listings and upload the data (and take ownership of those listings).

Fiona,

Just to be clear, what you're referring to are subdomains, and not domains. You're right, though, there are definitely issues related to duplicate content that is going to cause ranking problems. Typically, Google will rank the content that they crawled first: the others will be the duplicates.

The best way to deal with this is to decide which subdomain you really want: which will typically be www.clientdomain.com and then 301 redirect all of the others to www.clientdomain.com.

If, however, there is unique content on the other subdomains, then you wouldn't want to redirect those.

BeytzNet, I would make every attempt to welcome everyone to your community, not just authority figures. Treat them just as if they're anyone else who has just joined.

If you owned a restaurant and a celebrity walked in, would you give them special treatment? I hope not. They're just there to eat, not be paraded around in front of everyone. Welcome them to the community, welcome them to your restaurant, and give them the same special service that you would anyone else.

Jeremy, a while back there was a time when having two separate websites was preferred. However, that's not the case anymore. It's more important now to build your site's Domain Authority and Trust, and then let that DA and Trust pass throughout the site to help all of your site's pages rank well.

If you were to have separate websites, then you would have double the work to build the same Domain Authority and Trust. If you had one site, it's not as much work.

Let's say, for example, you get mentioned in the media and they link to your Phoenix location page. Well, that Domain Authority and Trust will pass throughout the site--and will actually help your other locations rank, well.

So I would definitely NOT set up separate websites. But, you might consider registering those domains and 301 redirecting them to your location pages on your main domain name.

I would, though, set up separate Google Plus Local pages for each location, and make sure each is verified. They should also link directly to the location page, as well.

No, Google does not penalize you for having content that requires registration in order to view. As long as you give Googlebot full access to the content so that they can crawl it properly, it won't be an issue. There are plenty of sites doing this successfully, and they don't have any problems.

Rasmus,

Google has been doing this (changing your title tag) for a while now. Google doesn't normally just "guess" your brand name or website name, they usually get it from somewhere. I would try to find out where they are getting it from and see if you can change it there. As Andy suggests, if it's your WordPress blog, then there is a chance that they're taking it from your blog's title, and you should be able to change it.

Eduardo,

I haven't looked into the specific backlinks, but there are a few factors involved. First, most likely you are not seeing all of the links to the site and to your competitor's site. I would check Webmaster Tools as well as a few other sources of links (ahrefs, majestic, open site explorer, etc.) and combine those links to get a better picture of the links to your site. Different tools have different crawlers and they all don't get all the links all of the time.

It sounds as if you may have an issue with bad and toxic links pointing to the site, I would review all your links and get the toxic and bad links removed (focus on the low quality links with exact match anchor text). There is a very good chance that you are suffering from these bad links.

Stephan,

When it comes to redirects, as long as the server returns a 301 Permanent Redirect when a page is requested, it doesn't matter absolutely whatsoever when it comes to SEO and rankings.

There are other considerations, though. If it's done at the registrar level, then it will inevitably lighten the load on the server. But, you generally won't notice a difference unless there's a large amount of traffic and a LOT of redirects involved (thousands of redirects, not just a few).