Point well made.

Viventura,

I'm not a Spanish speaker but I will assume that the text that shows up in the mouseover is highly relevant, informative, and well-written.  If so, eliminating that mouseover is likely to have an impact unless you use the text  somewhere else on the page (like underneath the header).  Currently, the text that shows up in the mouseover is indexed as part of the page content--and it's probably a fairly important part.

You could go into one of your lesser important category pages where such flyover text occurs and remove it from the html and test whether there is any change to traffic or rankings (or conversions) before doing it for the entire site.

I don't have a strong opinion but there was a good article on the topic on Searchengineland

If I may chime in, I'm guessing that the search was actually "site:mobify.com mobify" (without quotes). Whether that's right or wrong, however, I know does't answer the question.  However, when you do that search, you notice that there are numerous examples of similar occurrences. In each case, the titles are quite long.  This situation has been noticed before and there was even a post about it on the Moz blog by  Ruth Burr Reedy.  In that post, Ruth tracked down a likely possible cause as being that the title provided by the author is too long and because of that Google replaces it with it's best algorithmic alternative.

Peter, try shortening the titles and see if that solves your problem.

SouthernAfrica,

On those giltedgeafrica.com pages, you have your rel=canonical set to pages on your southerafricatravel domain.  Revise those canonical  tags and I'll bet you'll be be OK.

According to Google, here's when rel="alternate" hrefland="x" is recommended:

• You translate only the template of your page, such as the navigation and footer, and keep the main content in a single language. This is common on pages that feature user-generated content, like a forum post.
• Your pages have broadly similar content within a single language, but the content has small regional variations. For example, you might have English-language content targeted at readers in the US, GB, and Ireland.
• Your site content is fully translated. For example, you have both German and English versions of each page.

Sam, from an SEO standpoint, there's no need to jump through any hoops in order to get keyword into your URLs as the value that that brings is negligible and still decreasing. On the other hand, it can bring value in the form of click throughs once the result makes near the top of the the search results.

As far as the folders and URLs go, a URL that shows the directory (folder) but no page name is simply the default page for that directory.  Just as the /index.php isn't usually shown in the URL for a domiain's homepage (the default page for the domain), the /index.php is often not shown in the URL for the default page in a directory.

• http://moz.com/learn/seo/url
• http://moz.com/blog/11-best-practices-for-urls

Conversal, it would be helpful if you could provide a couple of search terms that you think the site should be showing up in the search results for but isn't.

Lee,

Have your read through this? https://moz.com/blog/how-to-optimize-your-google-my-business-listing.  I don't skimmed through it, but really learned it to the point where you can evaluate how well your competitors know what in there.  There is a lot more to GMB than keyword rich content and asking for reviews.   You will  really have to work on your pages to get them up there.

seoec,

How your content is cached in different data centers, will have a lot to do with the architecture of your site(s) and where they may be hosted.  CC TLD's may be the way for you to go but it does require an investment in the domains. You can also set up subdomain or us location specific sub folders to separate unique content for each market.  Each option has its own set of pros and cons.

Matt Cutts did a video that goes over the duplicate content issue on country code top level domains here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ets7nHOV1Yo and Rand did a white board Friday that covers your architectual options here  http://moz.com/blog/international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday