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What you seem to be addressing in your question is the value (or lack thereof) of having the term "Maine Resorts" as the first term in many of the sites titles. As you suspected, there is little value in doing so, but including "Maine Resorts" somewhere (just not at the start) of those titles is not necessarily a bad idea.

What would be more valuable, would be to use that first position for the targeted keyword(s) of that page. So for the "Accommodation Listing" page:

Accommodation Listing, Maine Resorts, [company name]

Think of a user searching for:

accommodation listings for Maine resorts

Now your Google, which of these two  pages do you return (if based on title alone)?

• Maine Resorts, [company name], Accommodation Listing
• Accommodation Listing, Maine Resorts, [company name]

So, If you have a homepage that focuses on "Maine Resorts" as a term, than having the term as the first term works in that case:

Maine Resorts, [company name]

Sounds like your titles are already unique, it's just a matter of tweaking them to be more valuable

If it's a Page 1, Page 2, Page 3 type thing, you might want to take a look at the new Google pagination options (rel="next" and rel="prev"):

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html

Ouch, yea I see. I would definitely get those canonical (www / non-www / www.blog) issues resolved first, then worry about the links

Brian

One trick you can use to check how long it's been indexed is to do a search with

site:www.nameofdomain.com/exect-page-url.html

Then on the left use the search tool custom date range (show search tools > Custom range...).

Start checking dates in a patterned way. You can diecide how you want to start this off, if you have a best guess etc., but basically something like:

Select Jan 1st 2000 and Today. Does it show up? Sure it does, so roll the later date field back to the 1st of two months ago. Still there? ...Repeat this until you see it disapear form the results, then your close. Narrow the dates within that month.

Brian

At a bare minimum this is a "Brand Grab" issue. As some people have mentioned here already, you want to have your name, and you want to get it yesterday. I have seen clients who waited to long, and now they have to settle for some string of characters that does not match the business name very well and is far from optimal.

As far as data goes, check out this article from earlier this year:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/facebook-twitters-influence-google-search-rankings

Beyond that, it just comes down to creativity so far as how to use it.

Example: Ask them if they could they benefit form filling a slot where someone calls in a cancellation short notice (for most offices, that is just lost money). If the answer is yes, then note how if that slot opening was to be announced on Twitter and Facebook accounts, where clients were explicitly told is the place information like this will be announced in the future, someone might see it and call in "Hey, I saw the opening, can I bring my kid in today?". Happy clients, happy doctors. Now ironically, even if no one uses it, the fact that you offer it would make some people say "yet another reason why I like the doctors office I go to".

Brian

The issue here is likely that your blog template and plugins combined are creating a situation where there are lots of links on the page to begin with (navas, footer, archives etc. etc.). As Ryan said, all of those other links on the page that are not in your post (page) count too, so when you add a few more inline in your post (or page) you are pushed over the top.

Depending on what type of CMS you use, getting the number links on the page down is probably going to involve some kind of change (template/plugins) to remove some site wide links you don't really need. Once you do that, you should see that 140 number go away (or at least way down).

Side note, it was reported elsewhere that the "Found over 41 years ago" thing is a bug, you should open a help ticket and let the staff here know you were affected by it.

Brian

Google Checkout allows any fees you pay for payment processing to be credited to your AdWords account, so if you use AdWords you basically get free payment processing.

Hmm.. thought they no longer did this? Can new users still set this up?

Gotcha, well depending on the crawl rate (PR/Update Frequency, etc.) and number of pages, Googlebot should be back to check it out, more than a month and I would start to wonder about other issues.

But, hey, as Matt said above, if you can gain something from keeping those pages, 301 them to an equivilant page on the new site.

If you know that thosee pages were low value or had no links (except internal ones), you could go the Remove URL route.

Brian

How recently is recently? The crawl should clear most of that up. But if they are 404ing right now, you could always use the webmasters tools Remove URL (Site Configuration > Crawler access > Remove URL Tab) to request the URL be removed from the index.

Brian

While I understand Gyorgys point, for what it's worth Google does allow you to change your location to see the results from other areas (see Change location link on left side). If in a new style of Campaign (Local Campaign) was made available, that paired that "Change location" functionality with: ( using Local Ranking Factors as a reference + Moz's own research)

• Ranking - Showing map and what position/pin you have for various local searches at that location
• Places Page Factors - Showing Errors/Warnings/Notices for the various Places page optimizations that can be done to a site
• On-Site Factors - Showing Errors/Warnings/Notices for the various on-site Local optimizations that can be done to a site
• Off-Site Factors - Showing Errors/Warnings/Notices for the various off-site Local optimizations that can be done to a site

Would it be a perfect solution?, perhaps not, but that would be a pretty powerful tool to have, and a very welcome addition to the Pro tool set here.

I have faith in Rand and the Moz Staff... something tells me they have been working on something like this for a while now Brian

Like Ryan said, no need to fix those. Think of it this way:

Red - Fix it now (these are actual errors)

Yellow - Fix it ASAP (these are warnings, but are likely hurting your rankings in some way)

Blue - No need to fix (this is just FYI)

Brian

At a bare minimum this is a "Brand Grab" issue. As some people have mentioned here already, you want to have your name, and you want to get it yesterday. I have seen clients who waited to long, and now they have to settle for some string of characters that does not match the business name very well and is far from optimal.

As far as data goes, check out this article from earlier this year:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/facebook-twitters-influence-google-search-rankings

Beyond that, it just comes down to creativity so far as how to use it.

Example: Ask them if they could they benefit form filling a slot where someone calls in a cancellation short notice (for most offices, that is just lost money). If the answer is yes, then note how if that slot opening was to be announced on Twitter and Facebook accounts, where clients were explicitly told is the place information like this will be announced in the future, someone might see it and call in "Hey, I saw the opening, can I bring my kid in today?". Happy clients, happy doctors. Now ironically, even if no one uses it, the fact that you offer it would make some people say "yet another reason why I like the doctors office I go to".

Brian

While I understand Gyorgys point, for what it's worth Google does allow you to change your location to see the results from other areas (see Change location link on left side). If in a new style of Campaign (Local Campaign) was made available, that paired that "Change location" functionality with: ( using Local Ranking Factors as a reference + Moz's own research)

• Ranking - Showing map and what position/pin you have for various local searches at that location
• Places Page Factors - Showing Errors/Warnings/Notices for the various Places page optimizations that can be done to a site
• On-Site Factors - Showing Errors/Warnings/Notices for the various on-site Local optimizations that can be done to a site
• Off-Site Factors - Showing Errors/Warnings/Notices for the various off-site Local optimizations that can be done to a site

Would it be a perfect solution?, perhaps not, but that would be a pretty powerful tool to have, and a very welcome addition to the Pro tool set here.

I have faith in Rand and the Moz Staff... something tells me they have been working on something like this for a while now Brian

How recently is recently? The crawl should clear most of that up. But if they are 404ing right now, you could always use the webmasters tools Remove URL (Site Configuration > Crawler access > Remove URL Tab) to request the URL be removed from the index.

Brian

What you seem to be addressing in your question is the value (or lack thereof) of having the term "Maine Resorts" as the first term in many of the sites titles. As you suspected, there is little value in doing so, but including "Maine Resorts" somewhere (just not at the start) of those titles is not necessarily a bad idea.

What would be more valuable, would be to use that first position for the targeted keyword(s) of that page. So for the "Accommodation Listing" page:

Accommodation Listing, Maine Resorts, [company name]

Think of a user searching for:

accommodation listings for Maine resorts

Now your Google, which of these two  pages do you return (if based on title alone)?

• Maine Resorts, [company name], Accommodation Listing
• Accommodation Listing, Maine Resorts, [company name]

So, If you have a homepage that focuses on "Maine Resorts" as a term, than having the term as the first term works in that case:

Maine Resorts, [company name]

Sounds like your titles are already unique, it's just a matter of tweaking them to be more valuable

Like Theo said, I would start with Webmaster Tools ( Links to your site > All domains area ), if they are in there, Google knows about them, and if they have any value to pass though that link, they are passing it.

One other quick note, if you know those pages you are getting links from are all index and follow pages, you may want to just double check to see if they have been indexed ( Google search for site:www.the-exact-domain.com/and-page-url.html ), if you get no results back, then you know those pages are not in the index (not found yet, or otherwise dropped).

On the OSE thing, if I am remembering this correctly Rand said something about how they were focusing the crawl, pulling in less low quality sites - could it be that the domains you are getting links from are low quality?

Brian

Gotcha, well depending on the crawl rate (PR/Update Frequency, etc.) and number of pages, Googlebot should be back to check it out, more than a month and I would start to wonder about other issues.

But, hey, as Matt said above, if you can gain something from keeping those pages, 301 them to an equivilant page on the new site.

If you know that thosee pages were low value or had no links (except internal ones), you could go the Remove URL route.

Brian

Hey, if the page you got the link on was interesting enough that you wanted to get a link on it, than what harm is there in letting the world know about that resource via Twitter, Facebook, or whatever other service you choose? ... and if it's not worth talking about, or you would be embarrassed to speak of it, than how "quality" was that link anyway

On the OSE Catch 22, gotcha... all I can think of is that perhaps the low quality sites are not always re-crawled with the update, thus not picking up the new links?. An SEOmoz staffer with intimate knowledge of the crawl behavior could better answer that one though

Brian

Far as I can tell, you will loose the Likes. This bug report has more info:

 http://bugs.developers.facebook.net/show_bug.cgi?id=18198 From what I gather, if you leave the old URL in the button, it will continue to show the old count on the new page, but if someone Likes the new page it will count for the new page and not increment the old counter... I could be wrong, but that says to me that they are treating them as two separate pages, each with its own stats.

I'm not sure how Google handles this, but if I had to guess, I would guess they are in the same boat. Someone else here may have more info on that though

Brian

If it's a Page 1, Page 2, Page 3 type thing, you might want to take a look at the new Google pagination options (rel="next" and rel="prev"):

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html