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So.. For the last several weeks (I noticed March 11th), we are having some weird ranking drops. Our keywords will drop overnight from their usual position between 2-6 to further than 200 and then be back to normal a couple days later. We use Sheerseo to track daily ranking.  I track about 15 KW everyday and noticed it happening then. Is this part of the recent changes? I am just really puzzled that we are seeing drops and then going back to normal and then drops again.  It is hard to know where you stand with such drastic differences day to day. Any ideas?

When I do a site search with Google (i.e. site:www.mysite.com), Google reports "About 7,500 results" -- but when I click through to the end of the results and choose to include omitted results, Google really has only 210 results for my site. I had an issue months back with a large # of URLs being indexed because of query strings and some other non-optimized technicalities - at that time I could see that Google really had indexed all of those URLs - but I've since implemented canonical URLs and fixed most (if not all) of my technical issues in order to get our index count down. At first I thought it would just be a matter of time for them to reconcile this, perhaps they were looking at cached data or something, but it's been months and the "About 7,500 results" just won't change even though the actual pages indexed keeps dropping! Does anyone know why Google would be still reporting a high index count, which doesn't actually reflect what is currently indexed? Thanks!

We are well into development of a hotel affiliate website (using Expedia Affiliate Network), and I know there are many challenges to SEO when using an affiliate system - one of the biggest being how to handle duplicate content. Outside of blog posts and static marketing pages, the majority of the textual content is contained in hotel descriptions. We will be creating unique descriptions over time, but we are a small team and this will be a lengthy process. My question for you mozzers, is whether or not it's advisable for ranking purposes to noindex any page with mostly 'stock' content, and only allow Google to index hotel pages with unique descriptions? Thanks for any input!

I have been seeing a trend for a while that is intesifying. My direct traffic numbers are down A LOT. We are not down 50% to LY (in actual number not just percentage of traffic) I am trying to understand what could be the causes of this issue. I was considering simply bigger meaner competition, but I actually perform decently on my returning customers.  Also my performance on my brand keyword is more inline with my current trend so I would except these KW to do equally as bad if the actual brand/store was the issue. The more surprising even, is the fact that I can trace back the start of the trend exactly to the day. Overnight on Sept 22 LY direct traffic went down 30% (to LY) when it was trending UP 20-25%(to LY) before. Now, we did do a redesign of the website on May 2011 (4 months before the drop), and did change host Oct 2011 (a couple weeks after the start of the trend). Do you have any clue as to why this could be happening? Did GA start tracking direct traffic differently?
Any thoughts?

So... our results keep slipping little by little. I am trying to understand the rhyme and reason to it all (aren't we all?)
Since Penguin, one website seems to have strongly benefited from the update. And I can't seem to understand why except maybe for the lack of seo efforts which resulted in no bad efforts. 
Search for "chaussures grandes tailles" in google.FR, you will find what I am talking about. This is what I seemed to have gathered. The #1 result has the KW in both their title and description is using blatant keyword stuffing (ie just  astring of keyword with no phrase structure), has done little with links or optimization, does have 300 facebook fans (but they seem to have been bought according to the last 3 months activity). Text is very limited on their site. They have a lower authority than other websites.They are also a newcomer as far as the market goes. It is important to note, that they also rank #1 on many of the related field keyword or top 3. So according to google this is a "winning" website as of now.and that is why it grabbed my attention. The #2 results, is a big website, equivalent to zappos or the like, seems to have redone their optimization following penguin and to me seems to do a pretty good job at writing "natural" content for the user, not for google, as much as possible without killing their seo chances. Their authority should be good, and tons of people are linking to them. They also do use a lot of PR blog/article.(legit ones though I am not sure about before). They invest heavily in adwords and ads altogether (tv/radio/etc..). They are the big guy but are not specialized on this keyword. The lower results, are not as representative, a mish mash of good and bad but all are specialized stores in this market including mine. They all get some ranking on some of the major keywords but not nearly as much as that #1 website which is killing it all (see semrush for more on it). So I thought I would focus on these 2 top (neither of which are mine) to start a conversation.Though feel free to comment if you have any hindsight on any of them. Can anyone explain to me why the #1 can possibly be #1? I would love to hear everyone's opinion on the matter. 
I fully understand that in the long run that #1 might not be #1 forever,  but then again it has been several months now at least and the longer that last, the more likely they are to gain new (possibly repeat) customers...

Hi, I am trying to clean up the seo of my website. Recently stopped using a professional which might have been using grey hat tactics. I am researching, researching , researching but having trouble pulling the trigger on what I am finding. I have a couple old link exchanges going on. They are quite old. Some of them are on the footer of a website, and therefore bring in a lot of links (ie every time a new page is created). I am wondering if I should ask to get these links removed.. My link profile is pretty bad(at least according to me), nothing extremely bad, but lots of leftover of links coming from petitions, forums etc.. that I can't get removed. I have recently gotten some mention on good website but they have a way around linking directly to any website so I dont get much help from that.. If you guys need my website I can share if need be. thanks!