Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thanks Natalie-Alexis

But where is that link? I don't see it in any footer, sidebar, etc. It is as if it is meant to be obscured>

Thanks

I sent an email a few minutes ago to support@moz.com but don't know if that is a usable address or not.

I would prefer an answer from a Moz staffer.

Thanks,

Hello Miriam,

Yes, the firm name conflicts with same term for B.Sc. I am readying a document where I suggest we change the business name and at first I thought, "we could just go to a different URL," but then I realized that doesn't change all the content with BSC in it.

I agree the key is searcher intent and that is what validates at least having a discussion about changing the company name.

Thanks as always for your great insight.

Robert

I am currently perplexed over a client's search results. They are an established company and well known in their field. (Unfortunately, I am not comfortable providing a link or their name.) The company is a consulting firm and let's assume it is an accounting firm, which it is not. When you search on BSC Accounting the results give them the first result but the next 18 results are around education - BSc Accounting. Consider the DA on the site is 34 and the PA for homepage is 39.

Is there a chance that when someone is searching on accounting firms that having the BSC in the name skews what they are able to rank for? Forget about searches for their exact name, I am more interested in thoughts as to how the BSC effects general searches for their specialties.

OK Fine. You are right and I hate it. 
As I started to read, I went duhhhh. Yesterday I blocked third party cookies when I was testing something and forgot to change it.

Thanks for the assist and double thumbs up to you!

Anyone having issues with the Moz bar? Lately no matter how many times I log in, getting data is difficult as it keeps asking me to create an acct. or log in. Even logged into Moz and on Q&A it is asking me to log in.

THanks

I was doing some KW research for a client and noticed something interesting with regard to Yelp and Justia. For a search on DWI Attorneys, they each had over 300 character meta descriptions showing on the SERP without truncating. Everyone else was either truncated or within limit of roughly 160 characters. Obviously if there is a way to get something other than a list to show that way you can own some real estate. Would love to hear from some of you Mozzers on this. Here are two images that should assist.

Best

Edit: I found one that was not a directory site and it appears it is Google doing it. The site has no meta description for the home page and this is what is being pulled by Google. There are 327 characters here! The truncation marks are showing it being pulled from different parts of the page. Image is Killeen DWI Attorney.

NOTE None of these are clients, etc. I also changed the cities so this is a general search.

zAQpA qZ9KI 06p7U

Yes, a page can rank well even when there is no direct link to the homepage. Don't worry about how much authority is passed from the homepage it is not nearly the issue you think it is. If you want it to improve in terms of ability to rank and it is ecommerce, you need good content written and images and I would suggest ensuring product markup, review markup, etc. 
There is no way any site with even a reasonable number of pages can have everything originate from the homepage. You have to look at the homepage as more of a: how do I get there now that I am on your site? 
Having looked at what you showed, you can do the menu either way without a significant SEO effect in and of itself (menu choice). Follow good SEO principles, URL, title tags, H1 etc. for your on page and you will get there.

Hello Becky,

I saw no one had responded to your question and I want to assist you. I looked at the slide with the sub categories and the issue is more of a UI/UX issue and not an SEO issue per se. If you have a massive number of products under each main category, it can be unwieldy to some searchers to have it all in a single row. Does the site break it down anywhere else? So, currently, under office do you have these sub categories on the site? office/office-supplies, etc. ? Or is each item its own category? .com/cable-management, .com/presentation-and-displays, etc.? (I am guessing it is the second option here and each is its own category.)

IMO, the main thing is how does your searcher use the site currently and are you improving it by adding sub categories - for current customers? to get new customers? Also, I would ask your dev team about the URL structures for each and how they are changing. Remember, if you change them you have to do 301 redirects for each affected url. If you have thousands of products that could become a bit of an issue for your dev team, but there are ways to deal with that.

If you are changing urls then I would pay attention to what keywords are important and use that as a guide for category vs. sub category. If you have any questions, ask and I will respond to you.

I do hope this helps.

Robert

I was putting a URL into a Google Spreadsheet and wanted to link to the url. The domain is a .legal domain and when I put it in I got instant search suggestions for a VF-Law.com (different firm in different state) but nothing showed for the .legal domain. I believe the site has only been up a few months but it is indexed in Google.

I wondered if there is an issue with these newer domain extensions and Instant Search? Thoughts?

I have attached an image here.

1BnYthO

Please do. And let them know I have been doing marketing for over 25 years. One thing you might show them is that you are focusing on:

• Keywords that bring the most value to the company

• Business types that bring the most value to the company

• Customer/Client types that bring the most value to the company.

Early in any agency relationship and often before we even agree to engage we ask clients what parts of their businesses are the ones that make them the most money or move their strategy the farthest forward? We regularly find companies caught up in selling product that is well known and costs them $2 to make and that they lose a dollar on every time they sell one. Those same companies have other products that cost them a nickel and take little time or energy or manpower to deliver yet make them a lot of money. I would rather help them sell those!
Best

Fred,

I enjoyed your query here because it is something we have all faced either ourselves or when doing client work. NOTE: That your query is about Local but you immediately go to a State + KW which is not a Local issue. What you are doing in this respect is very good and keep it up. I will tell you a couple of things that we don't talk about as much that I think are very helpful as well: A quality meta description (please no one tell me about it not being part of the algorithm) helps you in that it brings traffic to the site. I stress with our team that you must always "answer the searcher's query" in the meta desc. Another key item is the URL structure in my opinion. If Solar Installation is important for ranking for you, I am going to do my best to have a URL with that early in the structure. But...

I think you answered yourself a bit when you said, "Based on data I don't actually think keywords like "solar + state name" are actually that powerfully but frankly it is bit embarrassing to get crushed by 1-2 person companies when you have a 150+ company with a three-person in-house digital marketing team." I would say a search for Texas Solar Installation would be worthless in Houston, TX. People don't search that way on the whole.

But the bigger thing is worrying about what the other guy is doing / where they are ranking and how many resources she or he has. I have had clients drive me up the wall because, "XYZ company is ranking above them for these 10 terms... " What is hilarious is the one that stands out the most was a large regional firm that we helped increase traffic, recover from huge Penguin issues, and increase revenues by double digits year over year and they could only focus on rankings for KW's.

I urge you to focus more on what you are doing and what business results you are achieving than worrying over where Bobs Solar truck ranks against you for Michigan Solar Guru.

Best

Jill

You have a problem in what is showing as a page and what is not. If you will PM me I will endeavor to assist you. You have /wp-content/.../photo showing as pages. There are at least 6 pages using the title tag -  Rejuvalon Skin and Spa |  -

All of the SEO could use a bit of help. I am happy to assist you with it but will need access to the dashboard.  (No charge, you can help a homeless person for Christmas if you feel the need to repay it).

Best

Gaston, 
This is a good discussion question and EGOL has given much of what I think. I think the overarching idea with Moz has always been it was high quality advice and no one was doing anything overt to make it about marketing themselves or their companies. Having been on Moz a long time I can tell you that the comments to someone purposefully trying to market themselves generally tend to quell repeat offenders. 
So, the soft sell is the approach most use in Q&A if they are doing anything beyond truly helping, discussing and learning.

Good question though,

Robert

Hello J.P.

This is a common misconception and I still am surprised when I see people doing this. There is no point in buying a bunch of domain names and redirecting them to your site if there is no content for the domain you are redirecting from. So, if you are a plumber and you are in Fresno with FresnoPlumber.info as your site, buying and redirecting best fresno plumbers, super fresno plumbers, naked fresno plumbers won't be of any benefit. 
Conversely, I doubt you would ever receive a penalty for that either.

Now, if we use the same example, I am not against having fresnoplumbers.com, .net, .org, etc. redirect but that is more to keep those domains with the client. They could also own them and do nothing with them. I would not buy up all the .biz, etc. sites but some of the more generic TLDs might make sense. But only where they really match the current domain.

Hope that helps.

Robert

Having worked with quite a few firms and large partnerships I have always wondered a bit about how Google or Bing approach terms like attorney or lawyer, attorneys or lawyers. Having done a lot of KWA analysis I can tell you that in some states you will have a preference for one over the other and it is rather fluid. Even when you get into specific disciplines within the law, you will see searchers favor one over the other. So, for an example you might see in Texas that divorce attorney is searched more frequently than divorce lawyer but Criminal lawyer is more prevalent over criminal attorney.

Does anyone know if search engines look at attorney and lawyer as interchangeable such that if you build a page and only use lawyer you would still be able to rank as attorney, etc? I have my opinions based on experience but just thought it would be cool to hear from others.

Thanks

Don't forget all you did so that you can help others going forward! Really happy for you!
Robert

Lauren,

I don't think I would be concerned based solely on the basketball issue. My first guess with the outdoor vs. indoor basketballs or rubber vs. composite is that for whatever reason, there is less competition for the composite search or you have in some way out SEO'd one over the other. For me, the consumer, I like comparisons that are straightforward and abhor lengthy narrative.

Why not have your narrative be about your product for sale and use an ordered list of some type for the comparison. So on left side vertical you would have many pebbles, rougher to touch, indoor, outdoor, both, etc. then have each of them at the top with a column underneath. Simple checkmarks show which is best for what. By having your narrative be about the product you are selling, you don't confuse others or the search engines.

Also, I am assuming you are using product markup for your items?

Hope that is helpful.

Assuming it makes navigational sense, I don't think there is a problem. If you have other healthcare solutions beyond just identity, it would make sense.

Hope that helps,

Personally, I am fully confused at what you have done. I suggest you slow down a minute and let's clarify what you had, what was done, and appropriate next moves. 
You said you created subfolders in one place which would be mysite.com/subdirectory/page-for-something.

Now you are saying you created micro sites? which would be microsite.com/page-for-something

What did you have first and what change did you make?

Hello NappyValleyNet

I took a look and recreated the issue myself. I tried it with and without the OR operator, etc. We need a Moz staffer to explain it but my guess is that the urls being dynamically generated is tied to the issue. To know it is dynamically generated as opposed to a static page, when you look at the URL you see question marks, equal signs, ampersands, etc.

Hey Moz Associates, hook us up pretty please

In SEO much of what we do is an experiment. We think we KNOW things but we are experimenting. We look at a website page for kumquat vendor and realize the brand is before the keyword in the Title Tag and go "AHA!" as if changing that convention to the acceptable Kumquat Vendor | Kathy's Kumquats is going to shoot us to position one over all the other kumquat vendors who have the same exact thing wrong because we KNOW the answer. (My use of caps is not yelling; simply emphasis.)

If we think we are not experimenting I have one question: Why do we constantly hear others ask and often ask ourselves: Why is that site outranking mine when my SEO is of the highest and best variety? We don't ask this before we made the changes we ask it because we made the changes and nothing or little happened; thats experimentation followed by question and it's all good. But, it's still experimenting.

In science we learn that for any experiment we must be careful with endeavoring to test two variables at once. Yes, there are ways to do multivariate testing, but that does have limits. If I am understanding you, your client had 25 separate subdomains in each major UK city. bob.grass.co.uk, joe.grass.co.uk, wilbur.grass.co.uk, bethany.grass.co.uk, moz.grass.co.uk, smoke.grass.co.uk, etc. Each of these sites in some way ranked for terms related to artificial grass.

If the term is "best artificial grass" and in Manchester you had each one of the above subdomains ranked on page 1 and then you turn these into sub directories on the main site, your ability to rank each one of these as they did as subdomains is highly limited. Could you, yes, in a vacuum, but IMO not in reality on Google or Bing, etc. Subdomains are treated differently than subdirectories by search engines. My guess would be you thought if the subdomains all had some weight and you moved them to the main site that weight or the link juice would transfer; did you use 301 redirects for the change?

But the other issue is this is not dissimilar to what we used to do with "micro-sites." In highly competitive verticals we would have 50 websites that were all around the same item or service: dating, plumbing, attorneys, etc. Since search engines would not allow us to have 9 out of 10 positions on the SERP with one domain, we would just cheat and put up all these others as if they were not related and Voila! Then the world rotated on its axis and, bummer for us, our tactic no longer worked.

So, your best hope is to begin putting them back as they were and hope that you can continue to have each rank as if it were a separate site for a while. You might instead try to 301 the urls from half and see if that impacts the rankings for your main site. You have to either go back to exactly as it was OR you have to experiment, because when you change 25 variables it is nearly impossible to determine exactly what happened.

Hope that helps,

Robert

Good points Erica. "We should be building content (and our sites) around what people want to know."

I think that statement is 10x content. If you are answering the query and providing the info you have nailed it. You do not need a ton of words or interactivity, etc. I do think that terms like this (10X content) become overused and then misunderstood as the result. Frankly, if I hear of one more firm that does "content management" as a sub specialty or specialty I will hurl.

If you look at what I wrote, "Who is the audience, what do they want to know, how are we going to surprise them or move them, etc.," it doesn't require more than one person to pull that off. But, even if you are a one-person shop, you can't just write a bunch of stuff and assume you are giving the reader what they wanted unless, IMO, it is in a fairly narrow band vertical of some sort.

Good points, though.

Christy,

First thank you as you made me go look at Rand's examples of 10X content and there are some good ones there. (Though I loved #4). 
The most important question you raise to me is:  "what are your hesitations with focusing on shorter-form content that packs a wallop, and what excites you about it?" The hesitations are that for us as an agency with copywriters and others responsible for content that we will not do the creative work to truly create 10X content. Then, there is no length to go with no POW! ZAP!! BOOM!!! Even though I know length works for little or nothing, something about not creating something quality when you have no true length requirements bugs me more.

What excites me about 10X content are two things: First, as a reader or consumer of content I know how annoyed I get when I read a catchy title or a title about something that interests me and I start to read but when I am two paragraphs in I realize there is nothing yet that inspires or provides information that is relevant or new. Second, I know that clients are time starved business people and if you create something for them that is quality they are blown away by it. I love being in a client meeting when the client says to the strategist something like: "I have had three different people comment on this; it was great!"

The key IMO is in the planning. Who is the audience, what do they want to know, how are we going to surprise them or move them, etc. As they used to say in the print world long ago and far away... "What's the hook?" etc.

Really good discussion point to get all thinking about whether or not we are contributing to web spam or web renaissance.

Thanks

I just haven't seen where the pages reduced, but I only use that operator for a general search. I have never gone through all the pages, etc. For that I would use any of the crawler tools. It would be interesting to see a download of search, GSC, and then something like Screaming Frog to see what we see.

As soon as I wrote that I checked our site and realized what you are saying. For Google we get "About 281 results," as I go to last page of results it changes to "page 13 of 126 results."

Then out of curiosity I tried Bing and now I am scratching my head: "763 results." When I go to last possible page I get, "247-256 of 256 results." I think that means my 281 results from Google are mostly on Bing!!!! (in case someone does not realize my humor, that last statement can be defined as either jest or sarcasm.)

So, when doing the site: I get 126 with Google but search console has 428...

Certainly interesting. I will keep playing with it.

Best

Maureen,

I wanted to be sure, so did a bit of research and there are a very limited set of markups using the highlighter. Here is the list that is similar to what you see in the dropdown on the highlighter.

Given how long the highlighter has been available, my guess would be we won't see anything else that this works with. I am not sure why, but it has stayed like this for a long time.

Best

Steven,

I know we got the best answer possible for this, but I want you to try some structured data to see if you can "force" sitelinks:

Go read this on developer tools and then implement it: https://developers.google.com/structured-data/slsb-overview

It is markup to get a searchbox on sitelinks.

Then you and some friends start searching randomly for product x yoursite.com

Let's see what happens!!

BTW I am just on a mission about this now that I have more info. Cannot see a reason for them not to afford you sitelinks!

Best

I have done this many times and if you are sending the redirects to appropriate urls on the other site this is a non issue. I have done it with sites with 100K links.

If they were in some way buying non relevant domains and redirecting that would be different.

How does redirecting the old domain to the new harm new domain link building? I can't see it even if the new domain had one link and the old had 20K.

You need to separate SEO from branding for a minute.

You are saying subdomain and then presenting the www subdomain and I want to be clear that is what your intent was? If instead you are saying we have domain old-company.com and now we are going to be under domain new-company.com and we want the authority built on old-company.com then, YES, you need to do the 301 redirect of urls on old-company.com to new-company.com urls.

Now, in terms of the parent owning brand Old-Company you need to first be clear with them they do not own domain old-company.com in any way as that would negate your ability to keep the redirects once they start using it.

Google is looking at the brand only in terms of branded searches, etc. There is no branding issue beyond that. So, if the parent has domain oldcompany.com vs old-company.com or they add in The-old-company, etc. they are ok if they are ok from a business sense with that change. they do not need to have a subdomain to the previous domain like best.old-company.com

I cannot see them using the old domain in any way as being good for you. But, any variant of that old domain (not your sub domain variant with something.old-company.com) would be fine.

If I were parent and brand were a real issue, I would not relinquish the domain for any reason. If I were you and you believe you must have the redirects, I would negotiate with, "we cannot do the deal if we cannot "retire" the domain and use it as we wish except not visible on the Internet." I think you understand.

Hope that helps,

Robert

I am not sure I understand where you say, " ...it will end and change to "page 24 of 201 results." I have used the site: operator a long time and I think it is reasonably accurate. One thing I notice is the occasional "some pages have been ... duplicate" and do you want to see those? So, if you include all of those what's the magic number?

Is there a reason you want the data that demands an exact result? I am not sure of anything that would give you that. The question is "indexed" within the given search engine. If you crawl with screaming frog, etc. you may see pages that are not indexed, so the comparison is not apples to apples. Just curious as to what you are wanting to know exact indexed pages for?

Interesting question.

Excellent. Thanks

Can you give me the name of any of the tools? Thanks

Over lunch with our head of development, we were discussing the way CloudFlare and other CDN's help prevent DDOS attacks, etc. and I began to wonder about the IP address vs. the reverse proxy IP address. Before we would look to see commonalities in the IP as a way that search engines would modify the value to given links and most link software showed this. For ahrefs, I know they still show common IPs using the C block as the reference point. I began to get curious about what was the real IP when our head of dev said, that is the IP from CloudFlare... So, I ran a site in ahrefs and we got an older site we had developed years ago that showed up as follows: Actos-lawsuit.org 104.28.13.57 and again as 104.28.12.57 (duplicate C block is first three sets of numbers are the same and obviously, this has a .12 and a .13 so not duplicate.)

Then we looked at our host to see what was the IP shown there: 104.239.226.120. So, this really begs a question of is C Block data or even IP address data still relevant with regard to links? What do the search engines see when they look for IP address now?

Yes, I have an opinion, but would love to hear yours first!

Based solely on how you have written this, it is hard to believe it is algo change or any type of penalty. If you are ranking in the same places and CTR is same, it would seem that overall traffic for those terms is down. I realize it is not yet a month but have you checked the terms in Adwords to see if traffic is off this month?

Best,

Good discussion Felicia.

As an agency we tell all of our clients that SEO is a tool within a larger toolbox. With a question like this there are myriad approaches based on what the business type is. For example with Service Area Businesses (SAB's) everyone realized with the recent changes at Google and with Amazon Services, that the world is much more dynamic than they wanted to believe it is. 
If you were in the 7 pack for plumbers at number 5 today you may not be in it at all and need someone to look at "More Places" in order to see you Locally.  With changes to GMB Local listings, changes to Adwords, the advent of Google Services, Amazon Services, etc. you have to start to ask: "What are you willing to pay to be found?" 
For any client we are optimizing for Google, pay some attention to Bing and, well, don't worry much about the others. We are suggesting things like Yelp with caveats where in the past we would not. Today one also has to consider app advertising, etc.

IMO as Google moves to monetize more and more of their property, they edge toward being the YP of this era. I mean this in the sense of 20 years ago many businesses felt they were forced to advertise with YP.  With that growth for Google and people potentially feeling marginalized by it, many more advertising mechanisms will open up and we need to be open to what those will be and to being willing to test them.

Thanks for good discussion question.

I don't believe you can just say we have x links from directories of which __% are no followed and __% from followed use KW as anchor text; therefore, the links are the problem. It is simply not that simplistic.

Secondarlily, in your original comments you said this: "...however that page isn't used by google since it's brand new with a PA of 1." I can show you tons of pages with PA of 1 that rank on page one of Google.

I caution always that you should not get fixated on one issue with SEO as it can lead you down a rabbit hole. I do not think in this instance based on what you have here, that you are suffering due to the links. Frankly, you are looking at a page with a PA of 1 and then pointing to a site with 400plus links and saying the other pages are increasing in rank. The anchor text being what it is, I don't see how it is affecting this one page.

Best

Paul,

The content above the images is not very good at all and could be seen as spammy. I also noticed as I read it that these are actually antique or vintage door handles and knobs. I would want that to be clear on the site. So my paragraph would make that clear from the beginning: If you want REAL Antique or Vintage door handles and not replicas, you have come to the right place! Each of our door knobs or handles have been slightly reconditioned... Then for the types I would use bullets and not keep repeating the terms.

I looked at the site and this page has no external links to it which would be helpful. You would also be well served to implement product markup using schema.

I also noticed that when I did an image search on the 20's rose brass ball handles there was your image and then the same one for tons of ebay listings. One thing that can be helpful with products is to have your own images that you have taken. If these are your images I would put a copyright symbol on them, and I would make sure that weekly to monthly someone does an image search and files complaints on anyone using them without your permission. (You could also email the person using them and tell them if they use that image they MUST link back to you with a followed link to your page!)  You are fairly niche, so this should not be too difficult and it could be very helpful to you. 
I personally do not focus a ton on the competitor pages until I have things "near right" on the page.

This should at least give you something actionable to start with that should help with rankings over time.

Best

SCohen86

IMHO this is not the best way to go about finding a firm because you are going to get a lot of people saying they can help you and you still must be careful. Make sure you ask for and check references with businesses anyone says they have as clients or had as clients.

For something like this, I think your best place for help will be on the Google Webmaster Help Forum. If you post your question you will likely have someone respond who has experience with this or how to correct it. 
Another thing you might check is to see if there was a message in WMT about the complaint.

ALSO Go to this page about removing content from Google. You will see What product does this relate to and click on Web Search.

You will see a group of options and you want to check: "One or more items of my site have been removed due to a legal complaint and I would like them restored.

When you do that you will see a lot of legal writing and the option to either proceed or not. You want to proceed by checking  The DMCA complaint filed against my site was mistaken... (Note: Don't get frightened by all the lawyer writing.)

You will then see some instructions and a link to submit a counter notice: Otherwise, please complete this form to submit your counter notice.

This will at least get the process started for you. Frankly, if it were my site, I would do both the forum and file the notice.

I hope this is helpful,

Robert

The fact they are hiding content IMO this is black hat. But, don't get too caught up in it being black hat. I know your site and in most searches you are ahead of them. They have 4 backlinks all no followed. I think there are things you could do on other pages on your site to push them down and end up with more than one page on the SERP.

Go get em!

Deacyde

First you said, "however that page isn't used by google since it's brand new with a PA of 1. " I suggest using Fetch as Google and then once it shows as complete, click submit to index.

As to when is a specific link or group of links worthy of disavowal tool, that is a bit broader answer. You have roughly 400 links and roughly 100 or 25% are spammy directory links. IMO you likely are not being bothered by penguin IF the other links are at least reasonable. Also, with rare exception, most directory links are not doing you much good so losing them is not going to do much, if any damage. Think of it this way: Your client is a plumber, doctor, lumber store, etc. On a directory most of them have low value pages and then link out 20 to 100's of times. I have seen very few even higher value directories that are not either sending out a ton of links per page OR blowing it by using sitewide links, etc.

I think you can always experiment. Do the disavowal and leave in the few you think are higher value. For each of the questionable directory domains disavow the whole domain to save time assuming they have multiple links. Also, a strong caution here is no matter what link tool you used, also go look in GWMT (search console) to be sure there aren't any really dastardly ones you have missed  as many directories now block ahrefs, majestic, moz, etc. 

Once you do that if you don't gain traction, resubmit adding additional "good" directories to the disavowal. With what you have as a fairly low number the disavowal should be fairly straightforward and easy to get done. Nothing like dealing with a few hundred thousand bad links!

Let us know if this helps,

Robert

I would really like to try it myself. If you will PM me, I will check it and get back with you and keep all confidential. Just as curious as you are.

Robert

Miriam,

YOU is a ROCKSTAR!

Rachael,

Just for clarity (I actually had to draw this out to understand it): Current is BillingsGazette.com/autos 301's to MontanaWheelsForYou.com; correct?

You instead want to create a landing page for BillingsGazette.com/autos that has a link to MontanaWheelsForYou.com in order to increase ranking of MontanaWheelsForYou.com; correct?

If billingsGazette.com/autos Page redirects to MontanaWheelsForYou.com you are passing the link juice to the MontanaWheelsForYou.com page. If you create a new landing page say, billingsgazette.com/autos/landing-page and place a link to MontanaWheelsForYou.com, the new landing page will start with only the one link will not have the value that the older established page had in the beginning. Assuming that billingsgazette.com/autos also links to other pages, etc. the value of the link is: billings .../autos page divided by all the links leaving the page and each receives its share.

To make it easy, the redirect is sending all the value to the MontanaWheelsForYou.com page. So if the page billingsgazette.com/autos has a value of say 50 and you have 10 links, your new page would receive roughly a 5 value. And, if it has more than the link to the one page, the five would be divided again. So, from the landing page with value of 5 if more than the link to MontanaWheelsForYou.com then the value is less than five.

Hope that helps,

Robert

Funny,

I kept thinking where do I know CalicoKitty from (I remember kitty because I am a cat lover! All you haters can just go on a hatin!) as soon as I saw cape Canaveral I snapped! So sorry, I am older than I was when we first spoke!

Yes, we saw a similar and interesting jump in organic with the loss in Local. That does beg some serious algo questions!

My opinion is that this is Google preparing more and more for Google Services. Just like with Products, they know they can monetize and sooner or later, you will need to utilize G services if you want to be seen and yes, that means you pay. 
Have you looked at Amazon Services to see if they are doing anything around deep sea charters? Just curious.

Having looked at your local before, I know it is fairly sound. I really believe you have to hang in there and look to other avenues - don't rest on the organic non local piece. I really believe service businesses must start looking at what are good advertising sources. Is it Yelp, is it Amazon, etc.? BUT the caveat is you must hold any of them accountable and you need to become a tracking vampire. If it can't be tracked in real honest terms you leave them in the dust. Yelp is a big one for wanting to talk about how many people "saw" your ad. If they cannot prove converted traffic I tell clients to abandon whatever source it is. Now, our clients are able to fall back on us and we can dig fairly deep to find what is happening and what reality is. With YP I don't think we have a client today who uses it because we have just proven over and over the traffic is no good on most occasions.

But there will be good avenues for advertising and you should take them. For you, I would be looking at the Salt Water mags, etc. both digital and print. I think for many of the sport specific mags (not pro sports per se) many people still like to hold the magazine in hand.

Hope that gives a bit of hope,

Robert

With Local being so labile right now, we need to know what business, what vertical, etc. If you cannot share it here, you can PM me and I will be happy to keep it all confidential. 
I think all the same key ingredients for good Local still exist like NAP consistency, single page for each location, etc. You also have to look at what are competitors doing differently, are there new competitors, etc. We had a client who was ranking in their community at 2 or 3 for a long time in Local and after the three pack change all of a sudden was at 5 or 6. Our Local person who was fairly new was the one that discovered that their business we just outside the city limits for where they wanted to be listed. I am talking max 2 blocks outside. I cannot tell you that was the reason for the change, but you sometimes have to get really granular if you are to impact things.

Hope that helps,

Robert

Real Address is 123 HoHum Ln, Ste. 123, Farmer's Branch, 75244

Desired 123 HoHum Ln, Ste. 123, Dallas, 75244

If by safe you mean 100%, I would say no; but, probably 90 - 95% safe. The non Terms of Svc. issue will be ensuring you keep it as Dallas in every occurrence and citation sites will populate the name field by crawl OR by zip correlation - that means 75244 would be Farmers Branch and that could lead to a NAP that is different everywhere. So, if it were our client we would say we will do this and you must agree that any negative effect from this is not our responsibility.

Hope that helps,

As to should you worry, we need more info. Of all the links you show in a tool like ahrefs or Majestic, what percentage are these links?

Can you pm me a sample of one or two of them? I will be happy to tell you what I think once I am clear on what they are. We also do a ton with WP so could probably give you some direction there. I am only saying PM so that you can disclose if you don't want to disclose in public. I am not going to in any way try to sell you on our services and if you wanted service I would refer you as I don't like people hawking through Moz Q&A. 
Best

I would be shocked if it were an issue based on what you have here. I think you are fine.

Robert