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Thank you Luis.  Further questions:

1. You mention "if I don't want to index the forum page."  Would it be a better idea to not even index them?

2. I'm familiar with and have used the disavow page.  Isn't that just for disavowing inbound links from other sites?

I'm thinking of adding a Discourse discussion forum to one of my websites.  I'm not sure if it's going to be something that works well or not for the site.  So I'm thinking ahead and wondering what Google issues I could have if after a few months of having the forum, I decide to remove it.  What would Google think about all the then non-existent pages it might have indexed?  Would there be a simple wildcard redirect I could do in htaccess that would satisfy that? Or some other thing I should do?

"That said, did you analyse all incoming links to determine if there have been any other suspicious adds or drops recently?"  Yes.

"Surely you did other redirects from Site A to Site B?"  No, I have not. That was all.

"You probably know this already given you've presumably disavowed the incoming links from SiteB, but just in case."  Since I've taken the redirects off, I don't think there is a need to disavow; at least that's what I've been told.

"You can ask Google to recrawl the page using the "Fetch as Google" page in the crawl menu of Webmaster Tools. That might speed things up. No guarantee."  Good idea, thank you. I hadn't thought of that.

"f I understood correctly the redirect from siteA.com/blue-widget is gone.."

Yes, it is gone.

I understand your points, but those are not what has caused the page to disappear from the SERPs.  I also have pages such as Red Widgets, Green Widgets, etc, that are still ranking on page one for their terms.  The pages are structured in the same ways as is the now-SERP-missing Blue Widgets page.

I have a previously very strong ranking page that is now omitted from the SERPs, but only for one specific keyword phrase.  I think I found the reason, which I'll explain, and I hope I can hear some confirmation of my theory and a way to correct it.

Let's use the following made up domain and keywords:

Political blog SiteA.com had a few news articles about "Blue Widgets" (like 10 out of 10,000 pages). They became exceedingly popular, so on SiteA.com we created a reference-type page about "Blue Widgets" and in the news articles we already had about Blue Widgets we added rich anchor text (Blue Widgets) links that pointed to this new About Blue Widgets page.  (long before we wised up about keyword rich anchor texts and Google!)

After seeing how much traffic was coming to the About Blue Widgets page, we created a whole new site, SiteB.com, which was about Widgets (not just Blue Widgets), a page for each color of widget, and other pages about widgets. SiteB.com has an important and popular page, SiteB.com/blue-widgets, which is about Blue Widgets.   We then 301 redirected the SiteA.com's About Blue Widgets page to SiteB.com/blue-widgets. This page in SiteB.com ranked very high (like #2, #3) for years.

Two weeks ago SiteB.com/blue-widgets fell out of the SERPs, but only for the phrase "Blue Widgets".  The page still gets lots of traffic from other queries, and even the "Blue Widgets" query will bring up other pages on SiteB.com.  So, the only thing hit is the specific query "Blue Widgets" for the specific page SiteB.com/blue-widgets.

It seems obvious to me that Google took the combination of a) a site that it probably no longer liked since we sold it (SiteA.com) since it's gone downhill, b) the rich keyword anchor text on SiteA.com pages pointing to the SiteA.com page optimized for that keyword, and c) then being 301 Redirected to a SiteB.com Blue Widgets page optimized for that same anchor text.

I only discovered the SiteA.com redirects last week, which I had completely forgotten about, and had them removed right away.

My question is, 1) if this indeed was the issue, now that the redirects from SiteA.com to SiteB.com are gone will my ranking eventually go back to normal? and 2) is there anything I can do to get Google to notice the change and have it go back to how it was?

Thanks for the opinions.  I hate how the Fear of Google makes me have to potentially do or not do things that I think are to the benefit of users.

By the way, since forums are such a pain to manage, the forum I'm thinking of using is the new Discourse that a lot of large companies (like Dropbox, for example) are using. Because it runs on an complex environment I don't want to host personally, I'd host it at somewhere like DiscourseHosting.com (too expensive at Discourse' own hosting since they are just going after big sites). for something like eighty bucks a month.

Technical question: Because it's going to be hosted elsewhere from my own server, I need to map it to a subdirectory, forum.mysite.com, rather than mysite.com/forum (live example: http://bbs.boingboing.net/).  There's not disadvantage to this is there?  I have not heard of one.

Also, I'd be interested in any options in this choice of forum platform, in case anyone has ever used it, or is interested in checking it out. It works differently than the usual forums.

I have an active website with many users adding dozens of comments on the many pages of the site daily.  I'm am wondering if it would be good for the overall ranking strength of the site if I were to add a forum to it (in a subdirectory, like forum.mysite.com).

On one hand, I can see the forum posts as thin content, which Google wouldn't care for. On the other hand, I see the additional user engagement on the site, which I think Google would like.

I know the benefits it can have to the users, but for this question, all I want to know is if this would be seen by Google as a plus or a minus for my site, assuming the forum succeeded in becoming popular. I don't want to do anything that will diminish the value of my site in Google's eyes.

Thank you.

I have a website is is only of interest to US visitors.  99% (at least) of Adsense income is from the US.  But I'm getting constant attempts by hackers to login to my admin account.  I have countermeasures fo combat that and am initiating others.

But here's my question: I am considering not allowing any non US, or at least any non-North American, traffic to the site via a Wordpress plugin that does this.  I know it will not affect my business negatively, directly.  However, are there any ramifications of the Google bots of these blocked countries not being able to access my site?  Does it affect the rankings of my site in the US Google searches.

At the very least I could block China, Russia and some eastern European countries.

I just thought I'd show you all what a typical comment looks like.  as bad as this is, it's only about average. They can be much,much worse.   And yes, it came in all caps, as many do.

I JUST  GOTTEN THIS BUGET  PHONE  A COUPLE OF WEEKS  AGO AND I WANT  ,,,, TO USE  IT BUT I CN'T  CONNECT  WHAT SHOULD , I DO I  NEED A PHONE  REEL BAD  CAUSE I'M THU THE GOVERMENT PROGRAM  AND I  DO HAVE  MEDICAL-CAL  AND I  NEED A PHONE  TO CONECT  PEOPLE AND I'M ON A PROGRAM  WITH THE COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES .AND IF I  NEED TO B CONTACT  I CAN'T  SO WHAT I DO  . I  BEEN CALLING THE PHONE  BUT THERE NO ANSWERS I'M VERY CONFUSE...

And do you think that Google always knows who the original site is? Do they always check history?

On top of more aged content, we are the only one with tens of thousands of FB Likes (wish they were G+, but our users do not use that), and thousands of comments. All real.

I just read an article about Panda and it warned against against Clone sites:

"Clone sites are a strong panda factor (JM, Mar 10, 2014)"

I don't have any clone sites, but there are dozens of sites with imitations of mine.  We were the first in the area of interest, and then all these other sites that imitated us popped up.  None are exact replicas.  But many have spun some of our articles and used them to create their sites; the site structures are not identical though.

Google seems to know we are the original site on the topic since we are ranked #1 for most terms.

Would these be considered clone sites in their eyes?

Thanks.  So it's not true that Google doesn't like two pages from the same website ranking at the top of page one for the same exact term? I could swear I've heard this several times.

Good point.  Some of the comments are unintelligible, so I might want to manually make them sound like at least a third grader wrote them.

The good thing about our not-so-bright readers is that they get confused and click lots of ads.

I've got a website whose pages get lots of comments.  Tons of activity, which I would think Google would like (and seems to like).  However -- I just can't put this nicely -- most commenters are not very bright.  Their grammar and spelling is horrific. These are not foreigners who lack English skills, they are just about all primarily English speakers and the site is 99% US traffic. It's a low-income segment of the population.

So, I've been wondering recently if Google will mark down the value of the page due to the bad grammar and spelling in the comments, even if the page's content is otherwise very good and lengthy.  I have read that they grammar and spelling into consideration when looking at the page, but would that include comments, or would they know they are comments and not judge a page on that?

It would be a pain, but maybe I should I run all the comments at least through a spell checker? And manually fix their grammar? Problem is I get about 40 comments a day.

And when I say bad grammar and spelling, I mean REALLY bad. Embarrassing.

I’ve got some pages that provide information on some companies in my website topic space, and also corresponding pages that allow users to rate and review those companies. So, for example:

Company A information Company A reviews Company B information Company B reviews

Google searches for “Company A” or “Company B” generally result in my information page ranking #2 behind the actual company’s website, and the reviews page ranking #3. (Probably not good to have two pages ranking for the same keyword in positions 2 and 3).

The information pages do very well in Adsense while the review pages do not.

The review pages have always had comments open for reviews, and I’ve just recently opened the information pages to comments.  This has resulted in less of a need for the reviews pages as the comments on the Information pages are now serving the same purpose. I can even add a star rating to the information pages if I want so the review pages are completely unnecessary.

So, I’d rather strengthen my information pages 1) to more solidify their rankings, and 2) get more visitors there than the review pages as they convert way better in Adsense.

Question is, what is the best way to proceed?

Option 1: remove internal linking to the review pages (I have sidebar links too), so less link juice just naturally goes to the review pages. On the review pages, direct people to click the link to the information page to go there instead. Eventually, the review pages will fall off the front page of the SERPs and people will just go to my #2 ranked company information page instead (and maybe #1 if I’m lucky, but doubt I’ll get ahead of the brand).

Option 2: 301 Redirect the review pages to the information pages.  Functionally, this would work well for me, but I fear that Google may not like it for some reason.  My information pages are ranked so well that I do not want to risk them dropping. Are these fears unfounded?

Is either of these two options better than the other, or does anyone have a better idea?  Whatever I do, I don’t want those company information pages dropping from their #2 positions.

(My title says "synonym" but it's not exactly the most accurate word, but works best for the title_)

I have a site that ranks #1 for a term, and let’s pretend it’s “cheap phone”.  It’s also ranks #1 for “cheap phone service” and #3 for “cheap phone plans”.  These are all the home page with those rankings

I have a sub page whose natural title would be “Cheap Phone Plans” or “Cheap Phone Service”. I have it named something these and it is not optimized for either of these terms because I think it would be best to not mess with the good rankings I have already for those two terms

So here’s my question:  what would likely be the outcome if I optimized that subpage for “Cheap Phone Plans” or “Cheap Phone Service”? If Google began to direct searchers of this term to my subpage rather than my home page, would my home page lose some of it’s ranking with it’s main and most popular keyword, “cheap phone?

Thanks!

Awesome!  I just was looking at your work now.  I will put together some info an private message you here. Or should I just contact you through your website listed in your Moz profile?.

Thanks. But there is no category to find link audit services.

I just received a manual unnatural links penalty.  I was shocked because other than maybe five links many years ago, I've not done anything to get links.  The site is very powerful in it's own right and buying links is unnecessary.  My first thought was a competitor has done the link spamming on my behalf, any my site is very profitable and the competitors are plentiful and ruthless (i.e. steal my content and use it) since we are #1 for our search term.

I took a quick look at my links (via webmaster tools) just now and yes, in the last few months there are tons of links from very bad looking sites that are I've never heard of.  It's obvious I've been purposefully hit by a competitor. (What's it called when they do this?)

Does Google understand at all that this stuff goes on? Do they even care? On the eventual reconsideration request, if I say that I honestly didn't do those links, would they even believe me or even care?

I have read several articles on what to do now.  But this is so important to my income stream that I don't want to screw anything up trying to fix it, and I want to get it right the first time. Every day is very expensive to me.  So, I'd like to get some recommendations on any experts that can handle this professionally and swiftly. Please let me know of anyone trustworthy that won't rip me off, and if you are such a professional yourself, please let me know.

Thank you

I've not a site whose home page that is #1 for a popular keyword. The page is 1200 words, plus comments following.  It's a clean page with no popups, and has one large rectangle Adsense ad above the fold (lots of text around this ad, and a very high percentage of page ATF is text), and another large rectangle Adsense ad that is midway down the article (after you have to page twice to get there).  So, it's a very low ad to text ratio and ATF looks very clean.

I have room for one more Adsense ad closer to the bottom of the article, which would be about five page downs through the page.  My question is, will placing another ad way down the page affect my ranking in any negative way?  I'm so pleased with my #1 ranking I hesitate to add it.  But the page converts in Adsense so well, and heat maps show a large number readers do read all the way down the page, so I'd like to pick up some more ad revenue.

Yesterday, one of my sites had extreme Adsense clicks for several hours in the morning, which brought it up to CTRs of around 120%. My normal CTR is about 10-15%. It added several hundred dollars income over and above my normal amount.  After that, it went back to normal. I have waited to see if Google would adjust the income down, as someone or some bot seemingly clicked the heck out of the site's ads.  Nothing has been adjusted; it's been 24 hours.

Question #1: what usually causes this type of insane clicking to occur (i.e. competitors messing me?)

Then, today I noticed something else disturbing. I cannot find my site in the top 100 SERPs for the main keyword.  I was at #1 for a couple years, then, when I changed themes from Thesis to Genesis (site otherwise exactly the same) a couple months ago, I bounced around various positions on the first page. In the last couple weeks we've been bouncing between the teens and the thirties.  Two days ago we were at #15.  (the site is still indexed when I use "site:" to check.

It seems awfully coincidental that yesterday I had the Adsense click explosion, and today I'm not even in the top 100 for the first time in my pretty stable two-year history, and have no idea how far behind 100 I am.  I went to Google Webmaster Tools and see no errors or warnings relating to this. Adsense has not sent me any messages. So...

Question #2: does Google search apply some sort of penalty to site that have suspicious Adsense clicking?

By the way, I don't have any funny business going on with any bad SEO practices, it's all above board, and I have thousands of real readers each day Liking and commenting on the pages. It's a very real site.  Note: I have been checking the ranking each day via a Google Incognito window and searching for the term. Of course I use MOZ but I do the Incognito search for a quick real time check, which I've found to be accurate.

Thanks. I did make the links nofollow, as the purpose wasn't to pass rank, but to show the user a site that is also helpful to them, and related as well. (And I get nervous even making links nofollow, as it could be a signal to Google that I'm trying to page sculpt of something -- just can't win.)

Without giving away the exact sites, I'll try to describe with made-up site topics.  Let's say Site A is about how people can receive tax credits for installing solar in their home, and Site B is about saving money on electricity usage in the home.  Not the same products, but both interest the same user.  In my case, the sites are in the home telecommunications areas.

Thanks for the response. But I'm not asking about interlinking sites. I'm asking about sitewide links from one site to another, not both ways.

I own two websites that are somewhat related. On Site A, in the nav bar below the header I had a link to Site B. The nav bar shows on all several hundred pages.  A few weeks ago I got nervous about this as I was doing some reading about sitewide links. Not exactly sure if they were a bad thing or not in this specific case, I decided to change the nav bar so that the link to Site B only showed up on Site A's home page.

Well, within a week or so my site started dropping from its long-held #1 position for its main, high-volume keyword, slipping a bit every few days. Today it is #4.

My question is, would the removal of the sitewide links and replacement of them with just a link on the homepage cause something like this to happen?  And, I'm thinking about putting the sidewide menu link back in -- is this a bad idea?

Note: the ranking on Site B is very important, with double the RPM of Site A.

I researched the spelling and grammar thing, and you re correct, it turns out it is not something that Google looks at, although there is a correlation between writing quality and ranking, for obvious reasons.  Here's Cutts on the subject:

http://get.uk.com/page.php?article=1724&name=Better+Spelling+Equals+Better+Search+Results+%255BGOOGLE%255D

Thanks for your input.

"I would tend to agree with Chris though. Thinking about quality, engagement, and relevance will get you much more in the long term than just writing long articles that don't engage people."

There seems to be the assumption that if I write a long page, it won't be engaging.  That's in incorrect assumption.

One thing this is making me think about now too is this:  I think I should edit some of the commenter's writing.  I know Google marks down pages for misspelling and poor writing, however it is that they judge the writing. My commenters are of very low intelligence (but great ad clickers!), and their comments reflect that. I don't want to get marked down for that.

Appreciate the reply. But what you're saying isn't really supported by Moz and others' own research. (See this article, there are others.) It's proven that Google loves long article.  Obviously, a page needs all the other factors, such as is the page even good, are their social shares, etc, but all things being equal, a long page is better than a short page as far a ranking is concerned (conversion is a whole other topic).

b=But what I did get out of your response is that comments DO count, and that Google in fact likes to see comments. Can you explain exactly what you mean about "the fact that the page has visitor profiles that have commented on it?" When you say "visitor profiles" are you saying the name in the comment must link to a profile of a registered member, as opposed to a comment that was made by an unregistered user comment and therefore does not link to any user profile?

As Moz and others have proven, long articles help ranking, linking and sharing.  My question is, do the comments at the end of an article count in the word count as Google counts it.

Thanks for the answers thus far. I should add the following:

The existing site has perhaps 300 pages.  The target keyword for the new site only competes with one of those 300 page's primary keyword on the existing site.  All the other pages of the existing site are optimized around other keywords that are in the industry but not the same.  And the new site will not even contain the words that are the keyword base for most of the entire existing site.  Hope that makes sense.

So far we've talked about SERPs, but what about Adsense (if I add it to the new site). Do they care about any of this?

I have a site, let's call it ExcellentFreeWidgets.com.  There is a page on the site that is very popular and we'll call the page title, "Big Blue Widget."  That page is currently #1 for the search "big blue widget."  This week, I was able to buy the exact match domain for that page, we'll call it BigBlueWidget.com.

I want to build a site on BigBlueWidget.com to better capitalize on that search "big blue widget," which is huge.  The content would not be the same wording at all, but it would be the same subject.  It would probably be a five page or so website, all about Big Blue Widgets: what they are, where to get them, etc.

The sites will not reciprocally link to each other. New new site, BigBlueWidgets.com, would link to the existing site, ExcellentFreeWidgets.com.

The new site and the current page will compete for position in the SERPs.

Here are my questions to you experts:

1. Will Google care at all that the same entity owns both sites, or will just just rank for the term as they normally would.

2. I am not sure I'll run Adsense on the new site or not. I will be pointing a link back my ExcellentWidgets.com site from a button that says, "Get an Excellent Widget." But if I do run Adsense on it, does Google Adsense care that the same entity has a site and another site's page that are competing for the same term that both have Adsense add on them?

Note: I do not want to start a new entity for the new site (I'm in CA and LLC's are $800/year) as it's probably not worth all that hassle and money.

Thank you so much.  I hope the that obfuscating the real domain names did not confuse the issue too much.

I'm looking for any recommendations for a high-quality guest posting service that isn't posting to placing articles on their own network of websites, but instead has relationships with blog owners who will take good quality guest posts. And I'm willing to pay up for high-quality sites.

Thanks for any suggestions, including suggestions on how to find these services if you don't want to say any names.

Well, I have about 15-20% coming from mobile devices. However not all of them are phone-size, some are ipad size.  But I'm sure the number will be growing.

But let me ask this follow-on question. At the moment, I'm more concerned with  how my site ranks in desktop Google, rather than mobile Google.  So, in order to help make my decision, does having a website that is responsive, also help my desktop SERP position?  I know it does not directly affect it, but perhaps it might indirectly, as Google could use it as a quality factor. You know, like "hey this site isn't even mobile, let's take a few points off the ranking score on desktop."  They are always trying to calculate which are the quality sites, the ones that the owner is serious about.

I've got a site that ranks #1 for it's term. It's Worpress on Thesis 1.85.  The site is not responsive and cannot be because Thesis 1x is not (and Thesis 1x is a dead end). I really would like my site responsive, but I fear changing things might affect my #1 rank.

The least impactful change I could do is move to Thesis 2.x, but I have come to really dislike the company and hate to get locked in again.  There are other frameworks I would prefer to move to, but their impact on my pages' source would be much more.

So, my question is, is it worth moving to a new theme (keeping the layout looking exactly the same, although the "source" would look different) just to make the site responsive? Is it that important?

As I said, it is an aged link.  It went in at least 18 months ago.

A site of my is in the yahoo directory (3dprinter.net). It's been there for a long time.  I just went into OpenSiteExplorer to see where the link ranked, and it's not there.   Why would not not show up? And if it doesn't show up, is it even worth my money to do for other sites?

The home page when first called up has the usual stuff that home pages have, plus it will have the search box under the header -- there are no search results shown at that time.  Then, if someone searches with the search box, the search results slide down under the box (shifting down my home page contents in the main content area (not the sidebar).

And when someone goes elsewhere on the site and then returns to the home page, the search results are not there, just the search box again.

This is probably a dumb question, but here goes anyway.

On a site I have it would be very useful to the reader to offer a search box that uses a Google Custom Search that I have optimized to search websites that are closely on-topic with my site. I know it sounds bad that I would send people to other sites, but just assume that the reasons are valid for this discussion.

My question is, if the search results are set to display on the same page (the home page) as the search box, will the links in the search results to external sites just bleed my page rank to death?  I assume it would, but thought I'd check just in case I'm missing something.

I have to option to place the results on separate page of my site, and noindex it, but it won't be as powerful as it would be on the home page.

Back at this, still looking.  Any help please?

Does Google think any less of sites that have nofollow on most all eternal links?

I have a site that is an informational site about a particular market segment.  It is not a directory at all, but as part of the site I have pages for the various vendors, and have "states" pages that list which vendors sell in those states.

The site makes very good money on adsense.  But I see opportunity in getting the vendors to pay to be listed in our site.  At a minimum, grandfather in those already there, and then charge for new companies to be included. Most of the new companies are second-tier players anyway, and if they decode not to pay and get in, it's not to a detriment ot my site. But I do have companies lining up wanting to get in.

Of course my first thought, is what will Google think?  I would of course make any link out to one of the vendors NOFOLLOW, so even even though they pay for inclusion on our site, I am not selling links for page juice.

Google loves us in search right now, so they have a favorable opinion of us. The site has lots of content, and new blog posts and comments all most pages hourly.

So, is this going to be okay with Google? I don't see how it breaks any rules, but thought I'd better check.

One further worry: If I change the new guys for inclusion on the site, and don't charge the old ones, that means I'd have the new guys NOFOLLOW, but the old ones would still be DOFOLLOW if I don't change them. I don't want Google to be confused thinking I might have sold those existing DOFOLLOW links as well. So, should I change them all to NOFOLLOW? And if I do, does that then cause anything that Google would not like (I know they don't like pagerank hoarding).

Good ideas. Thanks.

I have a section of a site that I want to remove. It has a main page linked from the nav menu, and a half dozen subpages under that.  The pages get some traffic and have ranks up to PR3, which is what my site's home page is. I'm no longer want to do these pages as they require tremendous upkeep and I'm not interested in keeping them going.

So, I know if I just remove these pages and that's all, I'm going to pay for it somewhere with Google.  What else should I do? I do't really have similar pages to direct them too.

You said, "build a content site with a store, a content site with affiliate links instead of ads" Yes, I'm thinking I'd have many times greater pages with content versus product pages, and the product pages would have long, original content on them. You also said, "affiliate links instead of ads" So, having both ads and affiliate links indicates that I'm not that serious I suppose, since "real" ecommerce sites don't run ads as well? Interesting, this is unrelated to the site I asked the question about, but I have a site now on precious metals, which is high-content, low amount of adsense. I was thinking I might choose one metals broker affiliate link (like a Goldbank or someone) and place it in the sidebar. Would that small change screw up my rankings? And, "a site with a shopping cart operated by the affiliate program" I'm not clear on this. Why is that?

I know Google has slammed affiliate sites hard. But affiliate marketing can be a real business and had an idea for one, but I would like to know if ALL affiliate sites are looked at as evil in Google's eyes, or if it's just those with thin and duplicate content in the product descriptions.

I know they want brands to come up ahead of affiliates of that brand, and that makes sense.  If I sold Acme Widgets products, Acme Widgets itself should come up ahead of my site.  But what if the site sold widgets in general, with the term widgets not a branded keyword? If all product descriptions are unique and well-written content, on a site that is  high quality, would it still be downgraded by Google just because there are affilate links in it?

I guess overall the question could be boiled down to, are affiliate sites hit because they have horrible content or because they have links to affiliate programs in them?

What do you think Google thinks of a site that has redirects in it, I mean overall. Do they perhaps think something shady is going on?  I've got another site that I have to redirect about a dozen pages (and it's not a big site), as I migrate a poorly designed site to a better one.  The redirects will be from URL like .../sample-page.php to .../sample-page.  What will Google think of that?

And if some pages I've redirected don't have links to them, and I'm only concerned with the search engines changing the indexed pages, how long do I need to keep the redirects active?

I have a set of three pages that are subpages of a parent. The structure is as follows:

mysite.com/directory/personal-widgets

mysite.com/directory/commercial-widgets

mysite.com/directory/widgets-services

The partent page name "directory" really isn't working for where I want these pages to evolve. So I want to change it to "guides"

In a world without worrying about google, I would simply change the parent page to guides, so they look like this, and be done with it:

mysite.com/guides/personal-widgets

But, the obvious problem is that I have external links to the page now. And the pages have a nice PR. And they also have Facebook page Likes and I don't know if I'll lose those.

I know that if I should do this I should redirect the pages to the new pages of course.

My question is:

Will redirecting the old URL to the new URL with a 301 cause anything negative to happen that I might not be expecting?  Does Google dislike Redirects for any reason, or understand they are sometimes necessary?

Assume I may have some pages of my site that don't have a lot of text on them, and I have to keep them on the site. Let's say there are no more than 50 like this out of 400 great pages, and the ratio of great-to-short pages continues to increase.

If I no index the short ones, will Google really ignore them in search? Will they ignore them enough to not downrank my site due to the short, noindexed pages?

I know, theoretically, they are supposed to ignore them, but I don't always trust all the rules.

Good quetions.

"Why are you creating a directory for your blog?"

I already have a hand-made beginning of a directory of sorts--the major majors in some major categories. It is desirable on the site as it is a new industry and not everyone knows all the players. So, I am doing it to serve my readership and of course to then increase backlinks and visits to the site.

"Is the blog an industry specific blog of some type?"

Yes, it's specific, and it's a hot new industry with new vendors almost daily.

"What are you hoping to gain from having the directory?"

Backlinks and traffic. It's not really to get ad clicks on those page, but of course that would be nice. There really is no other good directory for this industry now.

"Is it something they pay for or do you allow them to be on it for free?"

Free. Although in the future I could always make it a profit center with premium placements, section sponsorship and the like.

After thinking about these questions, maybe option #2 with the best. Well, it's the safest and the least amount of work.

Although, I could go with option #1, and when they submit the description part I could tell them that if they want to control exactly as their listing appears they can submit unique content; otherwise we reseve the right to rewrite it in any way we like. And we can give them a Copyscape test for it so they know.

Now, one other thing to consider: While many of the companies are small and not "brands" so much and I have a good chance to rank for them since my site is so strong, many are certainly brands and with Google the way it is now, I likely would not stand a chance to rank for the company names anyway.

My blog site currently has maybe 100 posts and I do about 7-8 new a week. I am creating a directory for an this site, which will end up eventually being a few hundred or more entries eventually.

In the directory browse/search listing, each directory listing will have a title and a short description (one or two lines) and will show about 10-20 per page.  And then the user can click an entry to see more details for the particular directory listing.

This is where I have a choice, and I want to know what is the best for my site, in Google's eyes of course.

Options:

1. The listing detail is displayed on a separate page.

2. The listing detail is displayed below the entry that was clicked, on the same page, by use of jquery to slide down the other content blow it to make room for it. (It actually looks slick, I've tried it).

If I were writing full, unique pages for each listing detail, I'd choose option #1. But the vendors are submitting the content.  It's possible they might just copy and paste their site's About page into it, or they might not even add any more detail other than their address. I can't control it.

So, if going with option #1, let's say a third of the vendors add nice unique content, a third paste in some dup content, and a third just leave it blank (there would still be an address, couple line short description, and a title on the page).  Would this situation be good, not good or neutral for my site?

I'm not sure if adding additional pages, maybe half to two-thirds of which could be somewhat duped or of minimal word length would be bad or neutral for my site overall.  As for my existing and ongoing blog pages--they are all unique, long and Google seems to love them.

I wish to add a "News" section to a highly-read, highly ranked blog I have. The News pieces will not be in the same flow as my regular posts.  I'm contemplating what the best way to do this is, and would like some advice, please. I see these options:

Option 1. Pay textbroker type people to rewrite news releases and post them into the news flow. Pro: indexable content. Con: expense.

Option 2: Have a Submit News form on the site for vendors to submit their news stories. I would have to ask them to rewrite their stories to avoid dup content. Pros: Easy for me, no cost. Cons: Will still get dup content I bet, a lot of companies won't take the time to do it, and I will have no control over quality. (I really doubt this option will work).

Option 3: Post news releases from companies in their raw format, and mark them as no index (even if I don't noindex, they won't move up the SERPs anyway, so why not just noindex them). Pros: very easy, all the news I want. Cons: not creating any indexable content.

Bonus question: If I do Option #3, and I place an adsense ad on the page, will it work the same as if it was an indexed, non-duplicate content page?

Your thoughts?