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There is this belief out there that really large brands get preferential treatment in Google's web search results either because they pay a ton of money in AdWords or they have some other connections that gives them such preferred treatment.
It isn't true - but many SEOs, even well respected ones, believe this is so.
This morning in a Google+ hangout with Google's John Mueller, an SEO from Walmart woke up early to ask John specific questions about Walmart.com SEO issues. He asked his question around the 3 minute mark into the video.
He first shares that Walmart had some serious SEO issues a couple years back when their search results pages were being indexed and Google had a policy that search results pages should not be indexed. That policy still does exist and it can lead to a penalty or just some weird SEO issues.
In any event, Walmart has tried to block GoogleBot from crawling those URLs various ways but GoogleBot is still discovering those URLs. The Walmart SEO asked how can this be prevented. John offered some advice and tips.
So it seems this is something Walmart.com has been struggling with for years and was unable to pick up a phone and call Matt Cutts directly about to resolve. ;-)
Here is the video:
Forum discussion at Google+.
