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Has anyone received and responded to a notice of class action settlement from Google Adwords? The sender (and the website it directs to) is adwordsclassaction.com. I see that there was such a thing, I am just not sure whether that domain is the official one to respond to?

Hello! I will be giving a talk next month about free/low cost SEO tools and apps and I would like to hear what your favorite/most useful tools are. I know this question has been discussed here before, but this is a topic that is constantly evolving and I am interested in knowing what people currently find to be the best. I'd like to hear about things you really use on a regular basis--there are a lot of things out there that sound cool, but end up not being used. So, what are your go-to free SEO tools? Thank-you,
Linda

A couple of months ago, I noticed that in Webmaster Tools my site had acquired 300,000+ links from a single site, updown.com. It seems to be a reputable site, and also in the correct industry, so I wrote to them and said that we love links, but that was probably a few too many and they all go to our privacy policy page. I suggested that they had some type of error that they might want to fix. After a month with no response, I wrote again, and still no response. This is now a month after that.
The strange thing is that I don't see the links when I visit their pages, even in the source (Google provides a list of sample linking pages). I also don't see those links in Open Site Explorer, Majestic, AHREFs, nor Screaming Frog. If I were seeing this anywhere else, I'd just ignore it as some type of glitch. But this is information from Google. I have not received any warnings nor manual actions and I am disinclined to open a disavow can of worms, since the site is doing well and I'd rather not stir things up if I don't have to. Any thoughts about what I should (or shouldn't) do? Is this a problem, or should I assume Google knows it is a glitch and will ignore it? It has been in my Webmaster Tools for about three months. Thanks for reading!

How do I tell if a link in a Flash document is follow or nofollow? Or doesn't it matter? (I just found out that my company placed an advertorial in a Flash publication and I want to make sure it doesn't wind up as a paid, followed link.) Thank you!

We received a cold call from a company called Division-D. They make a lot of promises which sound good (but that's what marketers do 🙂 ). Advertising on a non-Google network probably would have fewer restrictions than an Adwords campaign and they say that they are fully transparent. Would it be worth it to listen to their whole pitch?

I noticed that when I was using this tool, the data in the tables would change, often by a lot (up to 50%) when I sorted the columns. (Did nothing else, just sorted.) Since I was starting a new campaign and really needed data, I contacted Google about this and was told: "I understand that the estimates are changing in the Keyword Planner tool when you sort the data. I reproduced this on my end as well and was able to confirm that this is a known technical issue on our end." "Unfortunately the information in the Keyword Planner Tool is currently not the best source of data for your analysis." They then went on to suggest I just test things blindly. So, what do you do to get information about keyword traffic and ppc estimates?

I just noticed that my images on Webmaster Tools are not my sites, they are some shopping site. If I refresh, it goes back to mine, refresh again, back to shopping. It is a known issue in the Webmaster Tools forum but has anyone seen this type of thing before?

I tried restarting Firefox, rebooting my computer (Mac), uninstalling and reinstalling the Mozbar, still nothing. I use that data a lot, so I'd love to get it back...

It turns out we own a few exact match domains that are relevant to our business. Is it worth doing anything other than just redirecting? (We have owned these sites for a long time, over 15 years.) The keywords are moderate to low in traffic and moderate to high in competitiveness. (Right now they 301 to our main site.) I know exact match is not as valuable as it used to be and that there are mixed opinions about microsites...

Is it better to have a blog under your main website's domain or should the company's blog have its own domain? And if the blog is on its own domain, do links to the main site look good or bad to Google? Thanks! (And please feel free to add any other related advice you might have...)

Has anyone posted articles on beforeitsnews(dot)com? Is this site good/bad/a waste of time?