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I think there's some of that in play. If Google can make us afraid of bad links so that we all rush to remove them, for example, that's a whole lot easier than actually creating and testing an algorithm update, especially one of the complexity it would take to do the job.

I also suspect that the 10-day Panda roll-outs and "multi-week" update are, in small part, meant to obfuscate updates. More of us are tracking them, and Google is not a transparent company, IMO.

Finally, I think they're getting into territory that's just more difficult. So many complex updates have collateral damage. I really do think that the multi-week update consisted of rolling out and rolling back changes, and I'm not sure they landed on much of an answer.

We saw a Saturday spike on MozCast, but to be honest, the last few weeks have been a wild ride. I'm going to be actively analyzing the "multi-week" update the next few days (probably posting next week), which looks like it did settle down during the July 4th weekend. There's been increased volatility since Penguin 2.0, and Google claims that Panda data updates are now rolling out roughly 10 days out of each 30 (I don't completely believe that line, but that's what they're telling us).

Now clear reports of webmaster chatter about this past weekend, but rankings have been so volatile that I'm not sure anyone knows what to make of the patterns right now. Unfortunately, I think that uncertainty and noise is exactly what Google wants.

One thing I'd suggest is potentially trying a click-mapping tool like CrazyEgg, to see where your home-page is getting traction. We all tend to over-estimate the user value of our own content, and what you'll often find is that a small percentage of your links are getting most of the activity. If you find that 2-3 sections are getting no love at all, it's a lot easier to start cutting based on that actual usage data.

I'm not seeing that source code on your home-page, but the problem is usual links that are hidden in some way, such as drop-down menus or scrolling images. For example, each picture that scrolls by at the top has its own link. Only one is visible at a time, but Google sees them all in the source code simultaneously. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but they do all count. Once you start adding these up, the numbers can go up fast.

I don't understand the point of the external domain, either - I tend to agree with you that sub-folders would be perfectly fine here. Unfortunately, there are two issues at play:

(1) You've got to direct the short, marketing URLs to the main site URLs. That's a relatively easy - you could either use rewrites or redirects (rewrites are probably better for humans, in this case). Google can't generally index URLs that are on printed materials, TV ads, billboards, etc. (unless people start linking to them or promoting them on social), so your SEO risks are pretty minimal. The safest bet would be a straight 301-redirect.

(2) The other issue is the long/ugly URLs on the site in general. If you want to move the entire site to the short URLs and then use those short URLs for marketing, that's great, but then you'll need to 301-redirect the entire current site. There are definitely risks to that approach, and I'm not sure it's necessary here. The benefits really depend on the scope of the current site and whether the URL structure is creating problems, like spinning out duplicate pages. You could also potentially use rel=canonical to solve some problems, but again, changing your site-wide URLs involves risk.

I wrote more on (2) here:

http://moz.com/blog/should-i-change-my-urls-for-seo

Just wanted to clarify - [www.getmove-in.com/sub] is a folder or sub-folder. A sub-domain would be [sub.getmove-in.com]. We rarely recommend sub-domains for SEO these days.

The solutions can be a bit site-dependent, but rel=prev/next is Google's approved choice for paginated content.  It does depend a bit on how complicated your searches are (are there also sorts, filters, etc. that create unique URLs?) and how many pages you're talking about. An older option some SEOs still prefer is to META NOINDEX, FOLLOW pages 2+ of results. Adam Audette has some good resources on the subject:

http://searchengineland.com/five-step-strategy-for-solving-seo-pagination-problems-95494

For products, it's a bit trickier. If you're talking about hundreds of variations, and they're very, very similar, then I think rel=canonical can be a good choice. Post-Panda, the risks of indexing hundreds of similar pages are worse than the benefits of potentially ranking for a few product variations. There's no one "right" answer, though - it's always a trade-off. In most cases, I think focuses your ranking power on your core, unique products is usually a good idea.

I'm seeing 200+ links in the source code for the home-page. From a usability standpoint, my first instinct is that this is overwhelming. If you're a big brand or major news site, you might be able to pull it off, but most people just can't digest this many options on a site they aren't familiar with, and you risk that they'll just give up and leave.

From an SEO standpoint, though, it's mainly an issue of dilution. The more pages you link to, the less internal PageRank gets passed to each page. If you have a lot to go around, that may be fine, but for most sites, you'll spread yourself too thin. Essentially, you're telling Google that all of these pages are important. A hierarchical approach can help signal the most important pages and can help Google prioritize (both in terms of crawl and ranking).

I don't believe that there's a hard cut-off at this point (the 100-link rule was based in technical limitations that no longer exist), but I do agree with Thomas that crawler fatigue is a real issue that can negatively impact your site.

My gut feeling is that that's not really worth worrying about right now - 10 pages of paginated blog post summaries can easily be crawled and indexed and isn't going to dilute your index. Where we usually see problems on blogs is if you have a log of categories/sub-categories, including tags. Some sites with 100 articles end up with 300 pages of search results, because they have 50 tags, etc. That can end up looking thin fast. Ten pages of results is nothing, IMO.

If we're understanding the situation correctly, I'd say this sums it up pretty well.

I can't think of any reason using canonicals would impact your Domain Authority in our metrics (again, unless something went horribly wrong). My best guess is that this is a coincidence and you've got something else going on, likely something related to your link profile.

While rel=prev/next was originally designed for paginated content, it is appropriate for search results as well. While you're right - they are technically unique - search results tend to have similar (or the same) title tags, similar templates, etc., and are often considered thin by Google.

Truthfully, the data on how well rel=prev/next works seems very mixed. I know mega-site SEOs who still haven't decided how they feel about it. Google's official advice is often conflicting, I've found, on this topic. As @CleverPHD said, Adam Audette has some good material on the subject.

It all comes down to scope. If your blog has a few dozen search pages, and hundreds of posts and other content, I wouldn't worry about it much. This is often more appropriate for e-commerce sites where search results may have filters and sorts and could spin out hundreds or thousands of URLs.

So, I'm confused - are you looking to keep both sites active? If you're just moving the tools to a new domain, you could NOINDEX the old pages. If the link-based penalty isn't too severe, you might try a cross-domain rel=canonical on the old site. Unfortunately, without understanding the penalty profile, it's a bit tricky to advise. It's really a cost/benefit trade-off - how much risk of carrying the penalty are you willing to accept vs. the alternative of cutting off all authority and starting over on the new site.

If you've had Panda-related problems, though, I wouldn't keep the tools crawlable on both sites. That seems more likely to prolong your problems than it is to solve them.

It is tricky. As Michael said it is important to get your content indexed first, which can help identify you as the source. Google doesn't always do a great job of that. Generally, I don't worry too much about Case 1, but in your case, it can be tougher. The problem is that many download sites can have very high authority and could start outranking you for these product descriptions. If that happens, it's unlikely you'd be penalized, but you could be filtered out or knocked down the rankings, which might feel like a penalty.

Here's the thing, with Case 1, though. If these download sites are simply outranking you, but you're distributing product, is it so awful? I think you have to look at the trade-off through the lens of your broader business goals.

Case 2 is tougher, since there's not a lot you can do about it, short of DMCA takedowns. You've got to hope Google sorts it out. Again, getting in front of it and getting your content in the index quickly is critical.

If you were hit by Panda, I'd take a hard look at anything on your own site that could be harming you. Are you spinning out variations of your own content? Are you creating potentially duplicate URLs? Are you indexing a ton of paginated content (internal searches, for example). You may find that the external duplicates are only part of your Panda problem - if you can clean up what you control, you'll be much better off. I have an extensive duplicate content write-up here:

http://moz.com/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world

I tend to agree with Martin - it seems like there's probably a way to preserve some of the power of the old site and 301-redirect selectively (or potentially use cross-domain rel=canonical tags), but it would take a much deeper understanding of the site than Q&A allows.

If you rebuild the site from scratch, you'd almost always want to de-index the old site. I'd flat out remove it via Google Webmaster Tools - it's the fastest method. Leaving both sites crawlable is only going to compound your problems and haunt the new site.

I'd warn, though, that if this is Panda-related, just moving the content won't solve your problems. You do have to sort out why they happened in the first place, or the same algorithmic issues will just come back. In other words, if the problems are content-related, then it doesn't really matter where the content lives. If the problems are link related, then moving will remove the problems. Of course, moving will also remove and advantages you currently have based on good links.

Unfortunately, this isn't a problem that can be addressed without a pretty deep audit. My gut feeling is that there may be a way to preserve some of the authority of the old site, but you really need to pin down the problems. Panda + Penguin is a wide swath of potential problems and just isn't enough information to do this right.

Just want to agree with both @Karl and @Glen - you can disavow the domain, but I'd also reach out directly to Blogpost, as they're your best bet for a takedown. Past that, you could file a DMCA request. Honestly, though, if you're just talking about one obviously bad site on Blogspot, your risk is pretty low here. There are bad sites out there, and Google knows it. Until you've got a pattern of bad links, they're not going to penalize you for something you can't control (the vast majority of the time, at least).

Just to second @Jarno - my immediate reaction is that the implementation went very wrong (which is far too easy when you're messing with .htaccess). The only times I've seen rel=canonical harm a site's rankings is when an implementation cause a ton of non-identical pages to be canonical'ed to just a few pages.

It depends a lot on scale, too. Google has had issues with very large-scale 301 redirect implementations, for example - especially if the 301s don't seem to be appropriate or are just to consolidate authority. I expect them to crack down more on that.

When you say "Moz Ranking", do you mean the MozRank metric, or the actual search rankings as measured by our tools?

If you want to private message me to tell me which site, I can take a look at your campaign. I took a quick glance, but I couldn't tell which domain it was you were talking about.

Just to clarify - the page on your site no longer exists (404s/500s/etc.)? If the target of the link doesn't exist, the link should be more or less dead. I generally wouldn't bother disavowing. It's a bit situational, though - I'm not sure if you're working to disavow thousands of links and this is a large-scale problem or if there's just this one like or handful you're worried about. If you've got a handful of spammy links that all point to dead pages, I wouldn't lose sleep over it.

You'll pass the PA - the impact on DA is a bit hard to estimate. It depends a lot on the strength of the individual pages, and, of course, if Google honors the tags. Once the canonical kicks in, the links won't be processed, most likely. It's a dicey proposition, though, and you'll probably need to adjust as you go. Most likely negative scenario is that the impact just isn't what you'd hoped for.

It should work, but as I mentioned, I'd stick to doing it page-by-page. If there's a blog "home" on the parent site, you could cross-domain it to the new site. Just make sure you don't cross-domain some critical, high-authority page on the main site, or you could cause yourself more harm than good. Ultimately, you're giving authority from your main site to the new site, and that's not a free transaction - everything you gain on one side costs you something on the other.

I'd tend to agree - it's really tough to say without knowing more about the site, but a bit of bad behavior across hundreds of thousands of profiles shouldn't impact you that much. Of course, just having hundreds of thousands of indexed profile pages can have its own hazards, so it depends a lot on the site, authority, etc.

The other option would be to just NOINDEX any questionable profile pages - that should sever the offending links. Of course, it also means those pages won't be able to rank, which could irritate the people building the links to them, so I'm not sure how lightly you want to tread. If you 404 and change the URL, you're sort of doing the same thing - they'll still have to rebuild and won't be happy about it.

I'll be brutally honest - the Panda updates have been very unkind to this sort of geo-targeting. Five or more years ago, spinning out hyper-local pages that were similar (search results + a few keywords changed) was popular and relatively effective. Now, Google views it as thin content. In the past, the worst they might do is ignore it. Now, they may penalize the entire site, if taken to extreme.

Personally, in 2013, I wouldn't do it at all. The rewards are very small, and the risks are surprisingly high. Is suspect that situation will only get worse. It's fine to have these pages for visitors, but I'd leave them out of the index. If geo-targeting is important, then focus on a few pages (maybe the state level or major markets) and try to build out some unique content for them. Without digging into your site, my gut reaction is that 300+ is dangerous.

Generally, I have to say that I think splitting out your blog site can do more harm than good, and splitting up AND double-posting is especially messy. I'm not sure on the business justifications, but from an SEO standpoint it's almost always trouble, long-term.

That said, cross-domain canonical should be effective here. It's a bit hard to predict, since the parent site is stronger, but done correctly, it should be low risk. I'm concerned with your implementation (in the comments), though, because it sounds like you're pointing the entire parent site to the blog site. That could be disastrous. Ideally, you'd canonical each individual blog post at the level of their unique URLs. Otherwise, you could really disrupt the ranking ability of your main site. Unfortunately, without seeing the exact site structure, I can't really tell you what the tag should look like.

So, I've probably dug into "Phantom" as much as anyone, and I'm afraid the picture isn't very clear. I've heard of people who got hit by Phantom and then recovered at Penguin 2.0, people who got hit and then hit again, and I've seen multiple situations where people got hit by Phantom only.

My gut feeling so far is that this was an independent update and not a Penguin 2.0 test. They might both be related to link factors or seem conceptually similar, but I don't think Phantom was an early or partial release. It happened across data centers and appears to follow a pretty typical algo change pattern.

Unfortunately, it can be murky and very situational. Optimistically, I tend to agree with @Paddy - this should be a good thing, and you're not doing anything wrong. I'd hate to see you shoot yourself in the foot by cutting these links or harming your core business.

Practically, though, I have seen situations where the duplicates started to cause problems or the scrapers or partner began to outrank the source (you, in this case). There's no easy answer, I'm afraid, other than diversification. If you can build a solid link profile beyond these links, have solid social signals, and generally appear to be a brand in and of yourself, then duplicates and other issues will have less impact. If you base everything on these links, you could start to run into trouble.

I'd be hesitant to tell you to cut valuable ties and relationships. For the most part, these links are positive. I'd just make sure that you've got eggs in other baskets.

So, here's the problem - if you follow the official uses of our options, then there is no answer. You can't have thin content or Google will slap you with Panda (or, at the very least, devalue your rankings, you can't use rel=canonical on pages that aren't 100% duplicates, and you're not supposed to (according to Google) just NOINDEX content. The official advice is: "Let us sort it out, but if we don't sort it out, we'll smack you down."

I don't mean that to be critical of your comment, but I'm very frustrated with the official party line from Google. Practically speaking, I've found index control to be extremely effective even before Panda, and critical for big sites post-Panda. Sometimes, that means embracing imperfect solutions. The right tool for any situation can be complex (and it may be a combination of tools), but rel=canonical is powerful and often effective, in my experience.

You should be able to customize a 410 just like you do a 404. The problem is that most platforms don't do that, by default, so you get the old-school status code page. That should be configurable, though, on almost all modern platforms.

This can get tricky when you dive into the details, but I general agree with Takeshi and EGOL - consolidate or canonicalize. If the products are different brands/versions of a similar item, it's a bit trickier, but these variations do have a way of spinning out of control. In 2013, I think the down side of your index running wild is a lot higher than the up side of ranking for a couple more long-tail terms. It does depend a lot on your traffic, business model, etc., though. I'm not sure any of us can adequately advise you in the scope of a Q&A.

Dr. Matt Peters presented some preliminary data at SMX Advanced today (6/11) and will be presenting more data at MozCon next month. I'm not sure when the full report will go out, but it should happen yet this summer.

So, I absolutely agree with your first point, but have to disagree a bit with the second (and that one, sadly, isn't entirely clear, even talking to Google reps). Re: the first point, it is a terrible mistake to take a reactionary glance at your links and just start hacking at them and hoping for the best. That's a good way to cause more harm than good - you could remove links helping you and still have no impact on Penguin, adding insult to injury.

In terms of GWT notifications, though, the situation isn't at all clear. Penguin is algorithmic, and GWT notifications have traditionally been focused on manual penalties. Over time, Google has used them to signal other kinds of bad links, but we've definitely seen confirmed Penguin hits where the site owner never received a warning.

That does not mean that disavow is inappropriate. It appears disavow has two primary paths:

(1) If hit with an algorithmic link penalty, like Penguin, then disavow as needed and wait for recrawl, and, most likely, a Penguin data refresh.

(2) If hit with a manual link penalty, then disavow as needed and file a reconsideration request (disavow by itself won't help you, in most cases).

I've talked to a handful of people who have had direct contact with Google reps, and so far, that's about the best picture we can piece together. The answers have been inconsistent.

It's not against Google guidelines for two of your domains to rank for one query - as long as what Google sees for those domains matches what users see, that's permitted and wouldn't be considered cloaking. I can't speak to the UK legal aspects, of course.

Whether it's a a good idea or not is a bit tougher to answer. If your removed geo-targeting and your two sites seemed to have very similar English-language content, it's possible they could compete with each other in unexpected ways or that one could get filtered out. Typically, if that happens, Google will filter out the .com in the Google.co.uk searches, so, at worst, you'd be back where you started. I don't think it's a big risk - just something to keep your eyes open about. If ranking both lets you hit some terms that you couldn't otherwise, their may be a business advantage. I'd just monitor the SERPs closely and make sure you don't encounter side effects.

The only thing I would warn about is don't try to trick Google into thinking the .com is the UK site or vise-versa. If Google naturally shows both and that lets you target different keywords, that's fine.

It's really difficult to tell what Google will do in these situations, and it's generally a bad idea to chain redirects and caonicals, but I suspect the canonicals will be ignored. The bigger problem here is that the 301 is basically saying that "realsite.com" is canonical, but then the canonical is saying that "1234.com" is canonical. Even as a human, the logic doesn't make any sense, unless I'm missing something. You may see unpredictable results (and unpredictable is usually bad).

I don't have much direct client experience with it (not very applicable to my previous niches), but I know that a couple of SEO friends in the newspaper industry reported using it successfully (very successfully, in one case) not long after Google approved cross-domain use. Of course, like anything, Google seems to modulate things over time, especially if they get abused. We're seeing a lot of changes in how 301s are handled this year, and I expect Google to start altering how canonicals (both internal and cross-domain) work, especially when people misuse them.

While it can work that way, Google has explicitly stated that they do not want paginated search results to canonical back to page 1. They suggest either using rel=prev/next or using a canonical to a "View All" version.

Now, in practice, it's a bit more tricky, but most SEOs I know have moved away from canonical to page 1. If we don't canonical to "View All" or use rel=prev/next, the next most common approach is to META NOINDEX/FOLLOW pages 2+. Otherwise, Google may stop honoring your canonical tags, which can cause problems sitewide.

Unfortunately, you're both right - using canonical on these could hurt your image search rankings and will remove the individual pages from ranking contention, but at this scale of duplication, indexing all of these is diluting your ranking ability. You could even run into Panda-scale problems or cause enough crawler fatigue that more important pages don't get crawled and indexed.

I'd probably lean toward using canonical tags in this case - the ranking ability of your core pages is more important, in most cases, then the ranking ability of the images. This is especially true with Google's new cached image search, where end-users don't even land on your site (they just view the image directly on Google).

The other option would be some kind of approach that loads the new pictures in the window but doesn't change the URL. That could make the images themselves crawlable but keep them all on one page. There are a few ways to do this, but they take some engineering.

We're seeing some mixed messages from Google in this regard. They have suggested recently that links do have to be re-crawled to be disavowed. For an algorithmic penalty, that should be enough. For a manual penalty, even if the links are disavowed and re-crawled, Google still may require a reconsideration request. So, it can be a bit tricky.

For reconsideration, someone is looking at the request, so we assume they take the disavow into account and try to adjust for that, but it may depend on the person and the situation. It's important that you thoroughly document what you've done in the reconsideration request. Don't just disavow a ton of stuff and then say "Hey, can we get back in?" They won't take that seriously, in most cases.

A couple of things to keep in mind:

(1) Our authority metrics factor in link strength and try to model ranking ability, but they don't model things like spam factors. If you have a lot of links that look strong on the surface but have been devalued or penalized, we often won't catch that. We're working on spam modeling, but it's extremely complex.

(2) As soon as you add "sydney" to the mix, this becomes as much a local SEO puzzle as an organic SEO puzzle. It's entirely possible that the competition is weaker on things like links or social signals, but has solid local ranking factors (like reviews and citations).

I'm sorry, but I think "onpage SEO has almost nothing to do with SEO anymore" is a very, very misguided statement. On-page covers a lot of ground, including using keywords in your content and titles, technical SEO, etc. I can absolutely guarantee that on-page can have a dramatic impact on rankings. It's also highly situational - your one case doesn't speak to the many thousands of variations of competitive niches out there. That's why I wrote this post a while back:

http://moz.com/blog/whats-better-on-page-seo-or-link-building

Google has said that site speed is a ranking factor, but our best guess is that it's probably mild right now. A site that is very slow could suffer problems and a site that's very fast could get a small boost. There are also indirect impacts. If your site is slow and people bounce, it could harm dwell time, which may be a ranking signal. There's a mountain of data to show that site speed impacts conversion, so I'd never want to suggest that site speed isn't important, no matter what it's weight as a ranking factor.

We've decided to hand off the directory list to a few interested industry friends, who are planning something new for it. There should be a placeholder for the new site soon, but it will no longer be part of Moz.

Let me add, though - if you're already 301ing a ton of expired listings at large scale (in the thousands), I'd try to ease this in gradually. Maybe just 404 new ones and then start switching the back-log. I'm always hesitant to switch signals on thousands of pages at once.

This is a point of disagreement among many SEOs, but at that volume AND if people rarely link back to the individual property pages, I would lean toward 404s over 301s. It's just going to be more Google-friendly at that scope. The other option would be to develop some kind of permalink structure that you could re-use as properties change, but that really depends a lot on the logic of your site and can get pretty complex.

It's hard for me to translate that into what the real anchor text would look like, but I think that targeting "/landing-page1" with "landing page 1" every time you build a link is definitely not a good idea.

It's really hard to advise without knowing more about the site, but consolidating the different types of rentals may be a good bet. If those search types are useful for visitors, then don't 301-redirect. I'd probably use rel=canonical here, or META NOIDNEX those variants.

Inactive listings are tougher. If they don't attract links and won't become active again in the future, then I think 404s are ok. A very large number of 301s that grows rapidly over time can start to cause problems and raise some red flags. It's fairly rare, but it has happened.

Removing the cities with no data is a good bet. You could META NOINDEX those, if they aren't typically linked to. I find that NOINDEX is easier to reverse later than canonical or 301. It's not an exact science, I'm afraid, and it often depends on the size of the site and the crawl architecture.

I have to disagree a bit regarding the risks. In general, the main problem is dilution - you're spreading the authority across more pages (as David said). Unfortunately, though, there are worse possibilities - including filtering (Google won't let certain pages rank, or lets the wrong page rank) and even Panda-scale penalties that could impact the broader site. The risks of duplicate content are a lot higher than they were even 3-4 years ago.

It depends a lot on scope, and there's always a trade-off. If you use rel=canonical or NOINDEX the photo pages, then they won't be eligible for ranking. On the other hand, if you spin out hundreds of photo pages, it could negatively impact your overall ranking ability, even for other pages.

If you're talking about a few photo pages here and there, I wouldn't worry about it. If your site has a 500-page index, and 400 of those are photo gallery pages (or something equally extreme), then I'd definitely be proactive. In most cases, I think using rel=canonical from the individual photos back up to the gallery is a solid solution, but it does depend a bit on the site.

I try not to over-interpret toolbar PR, but 500K indexed URLs for a PR5 site is, on the surface, likely to create problems for you. Best-case, your ranking ability is diluted across way too many pages. Worst case, you could encounter something on the scale of Panda.

Either way, at that scale, clean-up really can help. It is not an easy process - it takes time, and even best practices usually have to be adjusted to match the site structure and Google's reactions to your changes. For a site that size, it's really hard to give you quick and easy answers to where to start, but if there are reasonable ways to consolidate large numbers of "thin" pages, then I'd definitely consider that.

So far (and this is based on very limited data), it appears that Penguin 2.0 targets many of the same tactics that Penguin 1.0 did, just on a deeper level, across more pages, and probably with a bit less forgiveness. So, I think it's safe to say that anchor text manipulation is still a factor in the new Penguin update.

I agree with Mark that it's dangerous to think in terms of pure percentages, as it's probably more complex than that, and may be dependent on a mix of factors, including the SERP "neighborhood" you're in. The problem with any aggressive manual link-building is that it's prone to looking artificial, so it's important to look for ways to both build and attract links, which naturally creates a variety of anchor text. As long as you're building by hand, it's going to be hard not to "over-optimize" (for lack of a better term).

I definitely think it's a good idea to diversify across landing pages. If you're going to build links manually, I'd just be careful not to use the same tactics on every landing page. That pattern is going to look more obvious when Google sees it across the whole site. Mix it up as much as you can, not just anchor text, but the actual link sources and types of links. It's really easy to carry one tactic too far that's ok in small quantities.

Yeah, that's certainly painting the picture that this probably was Penguin and not just a coincidence. Best we know so far (and that's very speculative), Penguin 2.0 didn't introduce much in the way of new ranking factors. That is to say - it's not look at different things, it's just looking deeper in sites and probably being a bit less forgiving. So, the same rules for recovery probably apply to Penguin 2.0 that did to the original Penguin.

Unfortunately, that often means deep cuts to any questionable links and really focusing on quality. If you can't remove the links, that's going to mean disavowing, and even once you've disavowed, you may need to wait for a Penguin data update. Recovery stories have been hard to interpret, even for some very high-end SEOs I know who have been through the process.

The one consistent story we've heard is that, if it is Penguin, you can't just remove a few links disavow, and keep hoping for the best. It may take pretty drastic measures, and you have to weigh those measures against the loss you took. In other words, you have to figure out if the cure is worse than the disease. Sorry to paint a bleak picture, but Penguin is pretty harsh.

Honestly, given that you currently have relatively few cities, consolidating might not have a big impact. I'd be cautious going forward, if you were going to expand into hundreds of markets or started having a ton of results under every market, but for now it probably makes more sense to improve your link profile and try to get some content on the site that isn't entirely search results.

My gut reaction is that this sounds much more Panda-like. We've seen many sites with geo-targeted pages and searches gradually lose ranking and traffic over the past couple of years. The problem is that Google has just generally started frowning on spinning out long-tail phrases just to target keywords, and in situations like "serviced apartments + city" I'm afraid that the content quite often ends up being thin.

In your case, though, I'm only seeing about 400 pages in Google's index, so it doesn't look like there are very many variations or that it's enough volume to trigger Panda-scale problems. I don't think these pages are very strong, as they're basically search results with minor variations in the copy/title/etc., but I'd be surprised to see a sudden ranking drop because of these pages.

Your link profile does seem to be populated with a lot of low-value directories and you're using long, exact-match anchor strings. It may not be the branded text so much as a lot of text that just looks unnatural. I also notice, though, that some of the links we have in OSE appear to be gone now:

http://impulsesdirect.org/detail/link-3883.htm

You may have started removal - I'm not sure. You could remove some of these, but frankly, you won't be left with a lot. Anything you do moving forward is going to have to involved building or attracting higher quality links and developing content that is more than just directory-style pages. Google just doesn't value niche directories the way they used to, and I think that attitude is here to stay, unfortunately (I have a former client in the same boat).