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I can chime in about how to get bulk uploads going to Google Places:

GPlaces does have a tool for this:
https://support.google.com/places/answer/178024?hl=en

Just use the same Google account you use for AdWords.

Keep in mind that you'll still have to verify them via snail mail post cards so this process may take some time.

But as they come in and get verified in your Adwords/Places account then you should be able to use them in ads.

Good luck!

This could change in traffic be soooo many things without knowing your site's entire background.

There could be a Panda/Penguin penalty in play (I have no way of knowing) so read up on those and make sure you're not a victim of duplicate/thin content and/or shady link building practices (even if they occurred in the past, use OSE to take a look).

I'm not seeing the redirect from non www to www as an issue in terms of ranking but double check that you implemented that correctly.  I haven't heard of losing rankings over this tweak before but I suppose it's possible that it takes Google a some time to figure that out (though I dont see why it would hurt rankings in the interim).

Other sites outranking you for your own article is actually quite common if you're not on a strong domain otherwise.  3rd page sounds rather harsh though.  Are you engaging in any questionable link building practices?

Without knowing more it's really tough to say what your site's problem might be.  I think I can rule out the 301 redirect from www to non-www if implimented correctly.  Sean is correct in checking your robots.txt file as well.

Hope I answered your question if not solving your greater problem for you!

Quick and Sloppy Answer: the full names probably have more SEO benefit (if any is possible) as opposed to the city initials.

Better Answer: I'm not really liking the idea of creating a site with a pile of subdomains.  Are you planning on creating truly rich, full sites for each subdomain with location-specific content?  Putting something on a subdomain causes a degree of separation between each entity.  This could cause a bit of a loss for you when it comes to sharing the benefit of a link to one of the sd's or another.  For example:  batman.wordpress.com does not benefit as much from a link to wordpress.com or reallygoodsite.wordpress.com.  Of course this would be a different scenario but I still think you'd probably be better off using subdirectories ie: example.com/San-Fransisco-Real-Estate.  This ensures that there is no separation between one section and another and each benefits from links to the other.

In my experience subdirectories are easier to work with technically as well.

I'd rethink any situation where I was going to have to create potentially infinite subdomains and consider making sub directories with keyword-rich URLs instead if that's possible.  Do you really want to create 50 Webmaster Tools accounts and GA profiles?  I wouldn't.

Good Luck!

The two previous answers on this question have it right, I believe.

There's no harm in leaving the page available for Google to crawl and decide whether it wants to index/rank it or not.  If it's something that has been outranking another page of yours unintentionally you can noindex it, nofollow links to it, request its removal from the index and throw the relative URL into your robots.txt.  Pretty extreme if you ask me but if it's somehow ranking above a desired page that would be my move.

But to answer your question: no a single page in the index that isn't particularly useful isn't a problem.  Sites have privacy policies, about pages, and other non-essential resources all the time and Google knows this.  No big deal.  If you had hundreds of useless pages on your site that you didn't want indexed I'd recommend noindexing the lot of them.  But sounds like we're talking about a single page.

It won't ultimately hurt or help you to do any of the above unless, as I said the page is causing you issues in other ways (though it probably isnt).

Hope that helps.

Jacob @ Distilled

I'm a little bit leery of enabling the asker of this question but here goes...  Just be sure you use the information for good.

I've done this myself (to ban a spammer) by just using cPanel or whatever server software you have going on.  cPanel makes it very easy to see all of the recent IP addresses arriving to your server and what they requested.  The raw server logs should have the same info if not more.

This would be the most direct and complete route and you wouldn't need any additional software.  If you're looking for a software solution other than that I'd check out one of the recommendations above.  Depending on what CMS platform your site is on (WordPress, VBulletin etc) there may be a plugin that does something that will get the job done.  Would need to know what you're trying to do though.  Sounds rather ominous as it stands.

Edit: and to answer your question about Moz: NO it doesn't have this feature and likely never will.

Hey Jeffrey,

So in general I wouldn't lose too much sleep over GWT 404 errors.  No matter how many I've fixed, a few pop up that I have no idea how Google landed on them.  The ones I'd worry about most are the ones that have links pointing to them, internal or external.  GWT should give you the referring page so check those out and fix them.

If there are a few that keep cropping up just 301 redirect them to another page.

You should take a look at the sitemap and if there are /feed/ URLs in there, remove them and resubmit.

Hope that helps,

Jacob

Hey Robert,

I see why your "site:" search might trouble you a bit but... have you lost any rankings or organic traffic since the change?  I don't think I'd worry too much about Google's "site:" function as they've been fairly non-caring about advanced queries lately and more worried about parsing user intent and questions.  Since they're going for MEANING and INTENT over technical semantics I would say returning results for both domains when one is sitewide 301 redirected to another is fairly accurate in terms of SERPs.

That being said it sounds like you have most of the obvious ducks in a row reading through your other responses.  Does both the www version and non-www version redirect?  People link to both so Google may be showing results for one or the other.

I probably wouldn't expect these numbers EVER to fully line up.  IE you'll never see ZERO RESULTS FOUND for a page that has a ton of links and text using the old domain.

Example:  https://www.google.com/#q=site:seomoz.org

Still showing lots of results.  Just not sure I see the value or reason for caring about what shows up in a "site:" search much these days particularly when Google is ultimately showing people relevant results with that query.  If you're losing organic traffic vs April and you think it's related then that's a different story.

Good luck!
Jacob

Hey There,

Not sure what Moosa meant by "re installing GWT" but I wouldn't go that route.  I do agree with checking OSE, Majestic, Ahrefs and other sources to form a total link profile as no one crawler will give you that.  And Google's will always be limited (at least for now).

If it hasn't been too long since you picked up the links or set up GWT then I'd give this some time.  GWT is notoriously slow and incomplete as Google doesn't necessarily give you all the data.

But if it's been a while I'd start to check things like "301ing your www. version of the domain to the non-www", double check your robots.txt file to make sure Google can crawl everywhere the links are pointing.  Make sure the links you think you have aren't nofollowed or the pages they are on noindexed.  But frankly the above isn't very likely.

I'd need to know more to make a full diagnosis but hopefully that gets you started.  If nothing else go with Moosa's suggestion and compile 2-3 other link profiles.  Dont rely on GWT for that complete data anyway.

Jacob

Hey There,

I think you're probably correct in assuming this is just a hiccup with GWT, particularly if the sitemap was unreachable for some time.

Have you actually looked at line 697 of the sitemap?  Throw it into Notepad++ and check it out.  Maybe there IS something going on with one of your post titles including some weird characters.  It would be worth investigating if you're overly worried about it (which you shouldn't be honestly).

I'd dismiss the error in GWT and see if it crops up again over the next month or so.  If it does (of if you're hyper-vigilant) take a look at the Sitemap and see if you can discern anything different/wrong about line 697.  Sounds like there isn't if the validator didn't pick it up.

Either way this should be a low priority item on your webmaster radar!  Sitemaps are mostly for indexing purposes and if the URL on line 697 (and all other URLs too, I suppose) is/are getting indexed you're good to go anyhow (I'd bet a bottle of whiskey that it's being indexed anyway if your site is being crawled regularly).

Hope that helps,

Jacob @ Distilled.

Hey There,

Without diving too deep into your particular situation I can say:

I'd redirect and relevant pages to new relevant pages if applicable.  Beyond that I'd either redirect to corresponding categories, or just to the home page with possibly some sort of explanation on the change.  As I said I'm not totally familiar with the change from cabinets to bathrooms so it'd be up to you to decide how to explain that to your customers.

Honestly, I personally wouldn't let old URLs with links and traffic 404 on the old domain.  I'd redirect them somewhere hopefully relevant.  If not, the homepage works but I wouldn't expect a lot of value there anyway if the traffic/links aren't relevant.

As far as the Moz errors I can see why the crawler is confused with all of this jumping around.  That will continue until you decide on a single domain.

I guess I'm just not understanding what your plan is.  If you're redeveloping this old URL then just leave the URLs for now and build them out later.  If you're consolidating onto a new domain and abandoning the old then redirect relevant pages to new pages and/or the homepage if nothing else.  If there are no links or traffic then I wouldn't worry about it much at all anyway.

Hope that helps and GL!

Jacob

Hey TP,

This is quite an old question so you may have seen movement by now.  Any update?

Did a quick search of the GWMT help forums and found this:

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/pkirhRejNYE

Several other people with the exact same issue (same date too!).

Looks like many are back in business.  GWMT periodically has issues similar to this so I'd just stay calm

Barry over at http://www.seroundtable.com/ seems to cover these bugs more than most so check that site once in a while for errors like this.

Hope you're better now!

Jacob

I can chime in about how to get bulk uploads going to Google Places:

GPlaces does have a tool for this:
https://support.google.com/places/answer/178024?hl=en

Just use the same Google account you use for AdWords.

Keep in mind that you'll still have to verify them via snail mail post cards so this process may take some time.

But as they come in and get verified in your Adwords/Places account then you should be able to use them in ads.

Good luck!

Hey Robert,

I see why your "site:" search might trouble you a bit but... have you lost any rankings or organic traffic since the change?  I don't think I'd worry too much about Google's "site:" function as they've been fairly non-caring about advanced queries lately and more worried about parsing user intent and questions.  Since they're going for MEANING and INTENT over technical semantics I would say returning results for both domains when one is sitewide 301 redirected to another is fairly accurate in terms of SERPs.

That being said it sounds like you have most of the obvious ducks in a row reading through your other responses.  Does both the www version and non-www version redirect?  People link to both so Google may be showing results for one or the other.

I probably wouldn't expect these numbers EVER to fully line up.  IE you'll never see ZERO RESULTS FOUND for a page that has a ton of links and text using the old domain.

Example:  https://www.google.com/#q=site:seomoz.org

Still showing lots of results.  Just not sure I see the value or reason for caring about what shows up in a "site:" search much these days particularly when Google is ultimately showing people relevant results with that query.  If you're losing organic traffic vs April and you think it's related then that's a different story.

Good luck!
Jacob