Colons are seen by search engines as what they are. You say something, a word, then a colon, and then comes an explanation or enumeration.

In your example, you did it right, perhaps you should move the colon to where they belong, right next to the last letter of the brand, so it reads: GENERAL ALTIMAX ARCTIC: 225/45R17 91Q

The idea you mentioned, building titles for users, not for engines, is the way to go. However, there are some tweaks you can make to make it easier for both.

As in your example, the title could become: GENERAL TIRE: ALTIMAX ARCTIC 225/45R17 91Q - YOURSITENAME (personally I would put the colon next to the brand, and then comes the rest of the product name + you end up with " - YOURSITENAME" to help build YOUR brand.

Hope that helps!

Have you contacted the Google Webmaster Help forums? As that seems to be a glitch in Google.

How many pages are scraped by Mozbot? If the amount that mozbot shows is different, then you should either sit and wait until Google removes those indexed pages or create a conversation on the forums so someone at google can give you a hint of what is going on.

Both should happen.

You should design your coming soon page in a way that allows visitors to visit the AU version meanwhile. Perhaps even adding a newsletter sign up form...

If you are already getting links, then Google is already aware of your site. They were probably not indexing the AU version as you were forcing them to go the US, which is an "under construction" page.

Subfolders ARE the best approach

As to your options, I would go with A, but if a visitor goes to say the Canadian version: domain.com/ca even though he previously accessed domain.com and was redirected to the AU version as it was the first time and a cookie was created/session var to store that, I wouldn't redirect him/her.

Let me put this differently.

AU visitor accesses domain.com, you redirect to domain.com/au (and you don't create any cookie, as the user actually didn't select a specific location).

Visitor accesses again, redirected to the AU version, but chooses to change the Country to CA, then he/she is redirected to domain.com/ca (a cookie/session var is now created as the user actually chose another option).

Visitor accesses again domain.com (he has the cookie/session var), he is redirected to the CA version regardless he is in Australia.

Visitor accesses again, but this time he types domain.com/au instead of the naked domain. He has the cookie, but I wouldn't redirect him... as I figure he typed the AU version because he WANTED the AU version.

That's what I would do. However, you can choose to redirect him anyway to the CA version as he has a cookie/sessio var stored. That's up to you.

Then on the 302, what I meant is that every redirection you make in this case should return a 302 status code, not a 301, as the 301s can be stored by the browser and then the user will be "forced" to the redirection. EX: he is in the AU page, chooses to go to CA, you create a 301 (instead of a 302) then next time he accesses the AU version he is redirected BY THE BROWSER to the CA version.

Hope that clears it up.

Glad I was of help.

I do have some technical knowledge on redirections, however, as we are dealing with subdomains here, I'm not sure cookies will work. Remember that x.domain.com is a different domain than y.domain.com, thus making a cookie created by x.domain.com useless on y.domain.com.

I've checked a couple of sites that do this kind of redirection, and can't hardly found an example of it using cookies, I find lots of them using subfolders: domain.com/au/, etc. as the cookie is valid for all subfolders.

How about forgeting about a "Global" cookie, and just using one for the particular subdomain (if you still want to go with the subdomain route), here's how it will work:

domain.com -> redirects to the "best match" (US go to us version, AU go to au version, others go to whatever version you consider the "default").

Then, in the subdomain, you implement the lightbox pop-up (the less intrusive one you can come up with) and save their response, so if the user accesses the next day to au.domain.com they won't be prompted again to change the location, BUT if they access domain.com (a US visitor) he/she will be redirected to the US version and get the lightbox again.

You end up "basically" with the same results, however, it could be a little annoying for some users, at least I know I would be annoyed if that happened to me.

Give it a day and think if subfolders aren't better in your case, that should solve all problems, and implementation will as easy as 1,2,3 (I am capable of helping you with that approach). You won't be using cookies, but session variables (although cookies will allow you to remember the user choice for any time-frame you want).

Oops, forgot to mention, 302 redirects