Hi Uzair. Per Google, most punctuation is ignored (https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433) the & sign included. That said, a lot of times you'll see the & symbol in title tags due to it being shorter than 'and' and thus allowing more characters. In most cases the differences between using 'and' vs '&' are so miniscule you won't have to spend any time optimizing for them as separate entities.  Cheers!

You can use both interchangeably. Search engines can parse a domain name like appleandoranges.com into apple and oranges fairly quickly with a few other signals. That's just an example though, when using whatever it is that you're trying to rank you'll need to take into consideration the strengths of the results that are currently in place: backlink profile, social presence, on-going work, etc.  Cheers!

I see. Here's an instructive search: https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=pop urls

The news aggregator popurls (always conjoined in their branding and links) ranks highly for the spaced search while the discussion on the RFC 2384 - POP URL Scheme is further down the list.

Even if you get more far afield in your searches https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=pop urls#hl=en&q=face+and+book the conjoined, but well known site ranks higher.

You're not running Burger King in Matoon are ya? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burger_King_(Mattoon,_Illinois) -- a pretty good read about how the US has two Burger Kings...

That's definitely a tricky spot. Has the competitor already registered social media accounts in the company name as well? Is their domain a better match for the brand than your client's? Is the competitor active on social media matching the company name? Are both companies thoroughly listed on the sites you'd find in Moz Local (Yelp, YP, Foursquare, Google and Bing Local Business, etc.)?  To get the map pin you'll really want to focus on the Name, Address, and Phone lining up on each service and ensure that Google has the verified business address as well.  If there are big gaps in any of those things between your client and the competitor catching up should help move the needle.

In most cases I'm a fan of leaving the brand name off of the title tag as EOGL mentions. It's probably in your URL and all over the page that someone is going to see if they click on your search result, so you should do as much as possible to get that click. His examples are great.

Also consider that people searching for your brand already know about your site and if they don't they still have a VERY high likelihood of interacting with your site at some point.  With generic searches you want to do as much as possible to expose your brand to people that are unfamiliar with your brand, the ones that are the farthest from knowing who you are and what you do.  If you track how someone arrives at your site via search, you're very likely to see this progression:

1. Generic search
2. Generic search + brand or domain name
3. Brand name search
4. Purchase

Your brand is important, but having it in your title tag has very little influence over steps 2-4.  Focus on getting those initial visits.

Hi Kanya. This would hurt in terms of Local Rankings as Google doesn't want PO Boxes listed, "Use a precise, accurate address to describe your business location. PO Boxes or mailboxes located at remote locations are not acceptable." from: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177. Is he interested in having walk in traffic to his business? Or is it even set up for that? If not, Local probably isn't the answer. Cheers!

There's not much on this in sourced material other than some mentions in places like: http://www.google.com/goodtoknow/familysafety/advice/#behaviors, "Set age-appropriate filters on your computers and your child’s mobile devices: Filters and other internet safety tools block categories of inappropriate websites a child can view, such as sites containing pornography, violence, gambling, and illegal drug information."  Google's SafeSearch is primarily focused on pornography.  And the filters mentioned in the link above are in reference to installs on local machines.

Is there some filter going on though?  Try typing, 'california medical marijuana' into the search bar and notice where suggested search ends...  Obviously at this moment in time there's a legal gray area for this topic as a few states have made medical and recreational use legal, while federally it is still illegal in the US. And right now, search tends to mirror that grayness as well.