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I was about to say that 85 sounds significant, but then I noticed that Google has indexed 1.13M pages on your site. For your link profile/authority (which is respectable but still pretty medium-sized) that's a massive index. I strongly suspect you have a ton of duplicate content that's completely unrelated to this. You've probably got bigger fish to fry, honestly.

One thing you might want to look at is your search pagination, as that can easily spin out thousands of pages. Unfortunately, really sorting this out takes a pretty thorough audit.

How many pairs of these duplicates are there across the whole site?

I'm afraid I've seen issues with even decent quality directories. I have a client who originally published a print directory and then moved it to the web - they have relationships with all of the companies whose "products" they list (it's not a product directory, but that doesn't matter much for this discussion), they use unique descriptions, and they really focus on quality. Still, they've seen gradual declines, as the OEMs (essentially) rank higher and higher.

I think Google is just starting to view the directory model in general with more and more suspicion. They'd rather land someone directly on a result or answer then go through what's essentially another search engine. That's not to say you're automatically penalized, but it's a tougher model to succeed at than it was even 5 years ago.

I think, ultimately, you've really got to show some kind of unique value. If you're basically just listing other people's information, your chances of making much of a splash in the rankings aren't great these days.

Yeah, I think Matthew's right about the duplication - it looks like these are basically landing on the same results. It's not a disaster, but it's certainly going to look like thin content. I guess I'd want to step back and ask if these two paths are really necessary - could they converge on one URL if you're really serving up exactly the same products? The best canonicalization solution is ultimately not to have multiple URLs.

The canonical tag is slightly odd here, just because the pages aren't 100% duplicates, but it's probably fine. Honestly, a lot of it boils down to how many search pages you've got across the site and how many are duplicated. If you're talking about half-a-dozen, it's probably not worth worrying about. If you're talking about hundreds of pages, then cleaning up your architecture and removing these duplicates could have real dividends for SEO (and possibly make life easier for your visitors, too).

It can cut both ways, honestly. Look at paid links in general. If you buy a link from a site called "BuyMeSomeSEOLinks.com" that has "paid links" 50 times on the home-page with pricing, you're going to get caught. If you and I meet in a bar, and you agree to give me $50 for a link on my site, you'll never get caught, unless a Google employee happens to be sitting in the next booth. Now, I'm not condoning it either way, but I'm just being practical.

I think the key is a certain amount of subtlety. Google definitely, as a matter of policy, frowns on overt quid-pro-quo when it comes to links. If you send products to bloggers and actively solicit links (especially if you post that information online), you're at decent risk. If you send product to bloggers and make it easy for them to review those products but don't push the linking aspect too hard, it's a bit different, IMO.

Case in point - I recently had a weird situation where Amazon accidentally sent me a wireless headset. I thought it was a gift, only to realize they just screwed up a different order. I tweeted about the incident a few times, and then forgot about it. Two weeks later, the CEO of Headsets.com sent me brand new Sennheiser headset with a note that he saw my tweets. He didn't push me to promote it or ask for a link, etc. Of course, being a marketer, I did promote it on social media and told the story. To me, that's just smart marketing on their part. Of course, it's also a risk - I might've never reciprocated.

So, don't be too pushy - try to be creative, and make the experience fun for people. Make it something the bloggers want to talk about - not just a free product, but a unique and positive statement about your brand. That's win-win, IMO.

I'm not sure what the "id=" parameter is doing, functionally, but there are many ways to control it, and Robots.txt is probably not your best bet. You could META NOINDEX the duplicates, or you could rel=canonical to the "master" page. It's a complex subject, and I've got a comprehensive post about it here:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world

Those duplicates can definitely dilute your ranking ability, and even trigger a Panda problem (that could harm your entire site).

I don't believe there's really a sandbox in 2012, in the way we used to mean it. Many sites go out the gate ranking pretty quickly. Sometimes, after an initial grace period (30 days or so?), Google lowers a site's ranking, but that's usually because they re-evaluated the link profile. Large-scale duplication wouldn't cause that. The good news is that, once you clean it up, rankings should gradually improve.

I wrote a post about this last year, but the logic is in line with what Irving said - it's really a question of dilution:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-many-links-is-too-many

I would say, as someone who used to do a lot of usability work - don't assume more choices is better for users. I'm amazed how often people don't even see mega-menus or click on roughly none of them. I'd strongly recommend user testing and probably firing up something like CrazyEgg to click map. You may be surprised at how many links people never see or use. I think flat architecture has its merits, but putting all of the choices up front is rarely the boon for visitors that people expect it to be.

Since you're talking about a site with <20 pages total, 12-15 tag pages linked through the entire site is a lot. It's just an issue of dilution - with a new site, you only have so much authority (inbound link power) to go around, and you're now pushing it to twice as many pages, many of which are just internal search results that Google could see as low value. It's not a disaster, but it's probably going to hurt your ability to rank in the short-term.

I assume you mean 12-15 tags total, not per post, right? The other issue with tags is just that they have a tendency to spin out of control as a site grows. You can easily end up with 50-100 tags linked from every page that are not only diluting your ranking power but that have very limited value for users (people just can't parse that many options).

All in all, I don't think tags are bad, but I do think it's worth being conservative, especially when you're first getting started. A site with <20 pages doesn't need a ton of fancy navigation options. A clear, solid site architecture will be better for visitors and Google, in most cases.

One thing that I almost always see overlooked in these discussion - 301 and canonical have totally different impacts on the visitors to your site. A 301 will take the visitor to the new site, whereas a canonical won't. If you're really trying to phase out the old domain, canonicals could be self-defeating, because people won't know the site has moved and they'll still bookmark, tweet, link to, etc. the old URLs.

Keep in mind, too, that cross-domain canonicals are at Google's discretion. While they often work, and can pass PageRank, they're sometimes ignored. The are cases where canonicals may be safer, such as if you suspect the old domain carries a penalty. For a full site move, though, I'd almost always go with 301s.

It's possible that these percentages may hold true for some site in some vertical, but "on-page" counts issues like site architecture that are incredibly important for larger sites. I've seen sites made or broken by on-page. All 22 Panda updates are essentially focused on on-page.

There's no one formula, and I think it can be very dangerous to suggest a one-sized-fits-all approach. I wrote a whole post on this debate:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whats-better-on-page-seo-or-link-building

I also think the role of social in 2012 has been seriously overstated. Social mentions can be great for getting a site noticed and indexed, especially in a low-competition vertical, but the impact often isn't lasting, without sustained activity. Sustained activity requires content and solid on-page, so it's really tough to separate the two.

My gut reaction is that this is starting to sound too complicated, and you may be shooting yourself in the foot, but I don't understand the nature of the two sites, to be fair. I assume that they each have a unique role, since they currently have no duplicate content.

When it comes to canonical vs. 301-redirect, I think the core difference is what you want to have happen to users. A 301-redirect will take the user to the other site, whereas a canonical won't. If you essentially want to syndicate content to your own site, then a cross-domain canonical is a valid way to do that. This has to be done on the level of each individual post, though.

Google can ignore cross-domain canonical - it's just a hint, and definitely don't abuse it. For two sites, though, it should be reasonably effective. Again, the situation still sounds a little overly complex to me, and I can't say there's not a better solution, but I think the canonical is viable here.

Sorry - have to chime in here. Canonicals DO work cross-domain, and they often do pass link-juice, but it's somewhat at Google's discretion.

Joram and Adam are essentially correct. MozRank is built to emulate PageRank, and so it does take into account the MR of the incoming links, not just the total count. It is in essence, though, a measure of quantity - just a complex one. Links from sites with more links count more, so that's a quality signal, in an abstract way, but we don't take into account the relevance of the links or spam factors.

Domain Authority is much more complex and is a machine-learning model based on observed Google rankings. Essentially, it's an attempt to predict the ranking power of a site.

I'm afraid there's no one, easy answer. I have a comprehensive post about dupe content here:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world

Unfortunately, I'm not sure it's as simple as an equation - we use a machine-learning algorithm and I think the result just happens to be logarithmic. I know who knows the answer, though, so let me ask and see if it's something we're able to discuss.

I wrote about this a while back - I think it 98% still applies today:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-many-links-is-too-many

It's really a question of dilution - the more thinly you spread your internal link "juice" (PR, basically), the less each page gets. So, it's often a balancing act. There's rarely one right answer, but I find that less is often more.

I think Istvan's point about users is important, too. It's easy for people to get overloaded with options. I've seen sites with 500+ links that presented them very well, but that's rare. At the same time, those were big brand sites with a lot of inbound links and authority, so they can play by different rules.

You need to fix it quickly. Yes, canonical is a suggestion, but in my experience it's a very strong suggestion. I ran an experiment a while back where setting rel=canonical sitewide wreaked havoc on one of my sites:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/catastrophic-canonicalization

Now, Google may recognize it's a mistake and ignore it, but they also may just take days or weeks to process it, and the damage is just going to increase. I'd fix it ASAP and try to get appropriate (self-referencing) canonical tags in place.

Yeah, I think Nakul is on the right track here. You don't have to worry about the product pages themselves, because the categories converge on one URL. The search pages could be considered "thin" content, but it really depends on the scope of pages relative to your overall site. Rel=prev/next is a good bet for reducing your exposure (and it's low risk), but the solution depends a bit on the situation.

It's not a high-risk situation - it's more a matter of diluting your index (potentially) with hundreds or thousands of search pages that Google may not find very valuable.

Sorry, I don't think I explained (1) very well. What I mean is that you may want to gradually change the site architecture so that not all of the search options are crawlable pages. This could mean putting some filters in form variables, for example (instead of links). It could also mean making sure that certain paths always converge. There's no easy solution. This is a problem all big sites face, and it's very dependent on the platform/CMS.

With (2), a "level" could be anything. Maybe there are major cities you need to cover but everything else could stay out of the index. This really depends on your information architecture, but there's always something that's high priority and something that's low priority. If you can focus Google on the high-priority pages, it can definitely work in your favor. The trick is figuring out how to build the logic such that you can code that dynamically. I've found there's almost always an answer, but it can take some creative thinking. I definitely don't encourage doing it manually.

If the results are easy to group by city and you can code that logic, the canonical may be fine. Since the search results could be different in some cases, canonical isn't technically the best choice, but it does often work. It really depends on how different they can be, so it's a bit tricky.

Ugh - that's what I was afraid you'd say. Unfortunately, the coincidental problem can't really be easily solved with code, which makes it hard to use canonical tags. There's no good way to tell the site when to use them.

So, a couple of options:

(1) Try to gradually rework the structure so that there are less of these paths.

(2) Consider using META NOINDEX on some lower-value paths. Internal search results don't have great value for Google, so you could let the major categories/options be indexed, but the cut off a certain level (index nothing "below" it). That may be more feasible from a code standpoint.

(3) Use rel=prev/next, use unique TITLEs if possible (based on the query) and just clean things up the best you can, but leave everything indexed.

It depends a lot on your scope, structure, and your future plans. I'm not sure there's one "right" answer.

Ugh - that's what I was afraid you'd say. Unfortunately, the coincidental problem can't really be easily solved with code, which makes it hard to use canonical tags. There's no good way to tell the site when to use them.

So, a couple of options:

(1) Try to gradually rework the structure so that there are less of these paths.

(2) Consider using META NOINDEX on some lower-value paths. Internal search results don't have great value for Google, so you could let the major categories/options be indexed, but the cut off a certain level (index nothing "below" it). That may be more feasible from a code standpoint.

(3) Use rel=prev/next, use unique TITLEs if possible (based on the query) and just clean things up the best you can, but leave everything indexed.

It depends a lot on your scope, structure, and your future plans. I'm not sure there's one "right" answer.

Ah, got it - yeah, I think rel=canonical would be fine there, but I'd want to understand your architecture better. Are these pages returning the same results coincidentally, or are these two URLs that basically land on the same combination of search options/filters. If it's the former, it's a lot tougher, because that's just a coincidence happening at large scale. If it's the latter, a solid canonical scheme could help a lot, but I'd also explore whether these paths are useful (or should be indexed at all). In other words, in the long term, it might be better to use one URL consistently, even if people navigate by different paths to reach it.