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One of my clients' sites has just been redesigned with lots of new URLs added. So the 301 redirections have been put in place and most of the new URLs have now been indexed. BUT Google is still showing all the old URLs in the SERPS and even worse it only displays the title tag. The meta description is not shown, no rich snippet, no text, nothing below the title. This is proving disastrous as visitors are not clicking on a result with no description. I have to assume its got something to do with the redirection, but why is it not showing the descriptions?

I've checked the old URLs and he meta description is definitely still in the code, but Google is choosing not to show it. I've never seen this before so I'm struggling for an answer. I'd like to know why or how this is happening, and if it can be resolved.

I realise that this may be resolved when Google stops showing all the old URLs but there's no telling how long that will take (can it be speeded up?)

It can't be that easy, otherwise everyone (well maybe not everyone) would be doing it. Google's official line on this has always been that inbound links from bad sites can't hurt you. I'd like to believe that, we all would. But this is still a grey area and there's enough contradictory evidence out there. Take this for example :

http://searchengineland.com/google-webmaster-notifications-for-bad-links-pointing-at-your-site-84265

Near the end of the Google notification it says "If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request".

How does Google know which of your inbound links you were "unable to control" ?

Doing it this way is indeed pointless. But if you adjust the strategy a little, it can work very well.

What do I mean?  Instead of satellite sites (new domains with no link history, no trust or authority), create satellite pages on established authority domains (Web 2.0 sites, blog platforms, etc, youi know the ones I mean). It's all about the domains (domain authority, links from domains are more important than page metrics).

And don't just stop at one page. Publish multiple pages/articles on those authority sites.

Of course, you must also build links to your satellite pages

Anchor text is important but you don't need that many exact matches. If you concentrate on getting brand links (from strong domains), then you only need a few keyword matching anchor text links. You should also vary the anchor text bu using plurals, stop words and modifiers.

Can anyone explain the rows of 0 values for the majoity of anchor text reported in the Anchor Text Distribution section of OSE ?

e.g I ran a report for a website which has around 2,500 inbound links and when I looked at the CSV file, there are about 1,500 anchor texts showing as 0.  I'm sure there's either a simple explanation for this or its just a glitch. Can anyone help?

Has that been fixed now?  I'm asking becuase I just downloaded an anchor text distribution report and the total links (for all anchor text) are almost exactly the same number as the total external inbound links given on OSE.

Was the post up long enough to get cached?

If so, I'll be looking out for it  

Yeah, looks like Google Trends data is not to be trusted (like most other G products). I just looked at those graphs for some heavyweight trusted authority sites including the BBC and guess what - same big traffic drop  LOL

Steve O, I think you may be on to something.

The SEO community are going nuts at the moment discussing the implications of Panda 2.2 which seems to be in operation. Do a search and you'll see what they're discussing.

I've noticed a difference in the reported PA and LRD numbers for URLs depending on whether you use Open Site Explorer, or look at the same metrics from within the rankings history (in your campaign set up). I've checked this for a few URLs and what I'm seeing is the reported scores for PA and LRDs is different 9 times out of ten. The PA is sometiomes higher on one report, lower on another, or vice versa. Same for LRDs.

I thought it might be because one report was lagging behind and using old data, but that would only make sense if I was seeing an increase in reported LRDs, but it just as often shows a decrease !

Is this just a bug in the campaign>rankings history report or is there a reason for the discrepancies?

Was the post up long enough to get cached?

If so, I'll be looking out for it  

Yeah, looks like Google Trends data is not to be trusted (like most other G products). I just looked at those graphs for some heavyweight trusted authority sites including the BBC and guess what - same big traffic drop  LOL

Steve O, I think you may be on to something.

Anchor text is important but you don't need that many exact matches. If you concentrate on getting brand links (from strong domains), then you only need a few keyword matching anchor text links. You should also vary the anchor text bu using plurals, stop words and modifiers.

It can't be that easy, otherwise everyone (well maybe not everyone) would be doing it. Google's official line on this has always been that inbound links from bad sites can't hurt you. I'd like to believe that, we all would. But this is still a grey area and there's enough contradictory evidence out there. Take this for example :

http://searchengineland.com/google-webmaster-notifications-for-bad-links-pointing-at-your-site-84265

Near the end of the Google notification it says "If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request".

How does Google know which of your inbound links you were "unable to control" ?