Agree with all the ones above. Just adding Open Site Explorer to this list too

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/

Thanks! I will definitely go check it out!

Federico,

I do the same thing! I have been wondering if one day that option to switch back will eventually go away...

Beta version has been out for awhile. Curious to know what people think of Moz Analytics.

Personally, I'm having a hard time making the switch from Pro to Moz Analytics because I'm so used to the navigation and layout of Pro.

What does everyone else think of the new Moz Analytics? Advantages? Disadvantages?

It's definitely not a good idea. People don't like being deceived, and I imagine all of these pages have miserable bounce rates. As a user, imagine clicking on a search result thinking you're getting one company and you end up on the landing page of another. Definitely a poor user experience.

In Google's Quality Guidelines, one of the things they specifically mention is:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en

• "Don't deceive your users."

As for this site using the competitors names in their meta keywords (outdated) and their descriptions, I don't know if Google has a specific penalty to address that specific issue (maybe others will comment on that), but I do know that Google is looking for accurate information in page titles and other areas of the page to return relative results to searchers.

Overall, it's a bad practice unless done so for legitimate reasons (you are The NY Times writing about new owners of The Washington Post).

Additionally, there's an exception here for AdWords where you can buy a competitor's name and show up for searches in the paid search results. But I'm assuming you're referencing organic search results.

Hope that helps. I know it can be frustrating to see.

Thanks Moosa. I'll check out the link. To add, we already do use categorized sitemaps in the sitemap_index.xml structure. We have it split into several different sitemaps. No links are duplicated across those sitemaps, and we have noticed a boost in more pages being indexed since we implemented that.

My question still remains though.

If this sitemap (www.fancydomain.com/sitemap_index.xml) has the following structure:

<sitemapindex<span class="webkit-html-attribute"> xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"</sitemapindex<span>><sitemap></sitemap>http://www.fancydomain.com/Pages_Sitemap.xml<sitemap></sitemap>http://www.fancydomain.com/Carnivorous_Kittens_Sitemap.xml<sitemap></sitemap>http://www.fancydomain.com/Baby_Dragons_Sitemap.xml<sitemap></sitemap>http://www.fancydomain.com/Jimmy_Hoffa_Sitemap.xml Can we also add:

<loc>http://blog.fancydomain.com/sitemap_index.xml</loc>

into that same location? And if we can, is there any benefit?

Thanks!

Example of setup:
www.fancydomain.com
blog.fancydomain.com

Because of certain limitations, I'm told we can't put our blogs at the subdirectory level, so we are hosting our blogs at the subdomain level (blog.fancydomain.com).

I've been asked to incorporate the blog's sitemap link on the regular domain, or even in the regular domain's sitemap.

1. Putting the a link to blog.fancydomain.com/sitemap_index.xml in the www.fancydomain.com/sitemap.xml -- isn't this against sitemap.org protocol?

2. Is there even a reason to do this? We do have a link to the blog's home page from the www.fancydomain.com navigation, and the blog is set up with its sitemap and link to the sitemap in the footer.

3. What about just including a text link "Blog Sitemap" (linking to blog.fancydomain.com/sitemap_index.html) in the footer of the www.fancydomain.com (adjacent to the text link "Sitemap" which already exists for the www.fancydomain.com's sitemap.

Just trying to make sense of this, and figure out why or if it should be done.

Thanks!

Based on this answer from Google, http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=146750 you can't use the product schema if a customer has to make the purchase offline or at another retailer.

Does anyone know why they set it up this way? Has anyone ever tried to use product markup on a website when the product is purchased offline?

Also, is there another solution or another markup that would apply?

Thanks!

Hi Anthony,

Has the business claimed its Local+ page? Perhaps a verified listing would help. Also some downstream local citations could possibly give it a boost. Scott also has a great point about making your link profile look more natural too, even though it's completely justified to have lots of links on the company name.

-EEE3

One more: http://www.forrester.com

It's definitely not a good idea. People don't like being deceived, and I imagine all of these pages have miserable bounce rates. As a user, imagine clicking on a search result thinking you're getting one company and you end up on the landing page of another. Definitely a poor user experience.

In Google's Quality Guidelines, one of the things they specifically mention is:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en

• "Don't deceive your users."

As for this site using the competitors names in their meta keywords (outdated) and their descriptions, I don't know if Google has a specific penalty to address that specific issue (maybe others will comment on that), but I do know that Google is looking for accurate information in page titles and other areas of the page to return relative results to searchers.

Overall, it's a bad practice unless done so for legitimate reasons (you are The NY Times writing about new owners of The Washington Post).

Additionally, there's an exception here for AdWords where you can buy a competitor's name and show up for searches in the paid search results. But I'm assuming you're referencing organic search results.

Hope that helps. I know it can be frustrating to see.

I'd love a better resource for this one also.

I know you're looking for something specific, but here are some worthwhile resources you could try if you haven't already:

• http://blog.kissmetrics.com
• http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33742/12-Revealing-Charts-to-Help-You-Benchmark-Your-Business-Blogging-Performance-NEW-DATA.aspx
• http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/insights/library/studies/?cat=measure-and-analyze
• http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Future-of-Big-Data/Overview.aspx
• Google+ - follow people like Avinash Kaushik which will then lead you to a slew of other Analytics brains as well. They often post interesting stats they come across.

Some big research firms also have Internet Roundtables, for example, like the one JD Power & Associates has for the automotive industry.

You might also see if any research papers have been published by doing a scholarly search since programs such as Masters of Science in Analytics are growing.

You could also check out some of the Google Analytics Certified Partners' blogs.

Not knowing what sector you're in, you could be right in that there hasn't been a study specifically catering to it, but maybe you'd be able to pull in some applicable data from the resources above.

Beta version has been out for awhile. Curious to know what people think of Moz Analytics.

Personally, I'm having a hard time making the switch from Pro to Moz Analytics because I'm so used to the navigation and layout of Pro.

What does everyone else think of the new Moz Analytics? Advantages? Disadvantages?

Federico,

I do the same thing! I have been wondering if one day that option to switch back will eventually go away...

Hi Anthony,

Has the business claimed its Local+ page? Perhaps a verified listing would help. Also some downstream local citations could possibly give it a boost. Scott also has a great point about making your link profile look more natural too, even though it's completely justified to have lots of links on the company name.

-EEE3