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Now that is interesting, I'd never heard that. I thought dofollow or no follow only had to do with passing link juice.

Anyone else concur with this?

I understand Google likes long content, and I make all my pages at least 500 words of unique and good content. But there is something I am curious about. Do they also count comments as content?

The reason I'm asking is that I'm considering creating a Q&A site, where I'd control the questions, making sure they would be good ones and not duplicates, and then have people add answers. In reality, I'd be populating most the questions as first, and most definitely supplying a very good and long answer to questions.  The answers would likely be in the form of comments, with highest ranked answers at top.  So, I'm wondering what Google would think of a 100 word question, with a several hundred word answer in a comment, often followed by some other comments after that. Would it be a 100 word page or a 500+ word page?

I have a couple sites that deal with broadband internet access, and I'm looking to monetize beyond adsense. I'd like to sign up for some affiliate programs from internet service providers like Charter, CenturyLink, Comcast, etc.

I found a couple affiliate programs but I am having no luck at all figuring out the programs that so many other websites are involved with.  In about every case, the user is able to enter in their address and then a search is performed, returning programs available at their location.  The programs I've found just do the traditional ad click-throughs for a possible commission.

Can anyone enlighten me what kind of programs they are using?

DaringFireball.net must have very low time on site numbers though. There's nothing to read on that blog, and links take the user away from the site.  It's just a weird example that he chose.

Yes, that's the difference, but how does Google know unless they takes the time to read each site?

In a blog of mine, I'm taking care to rewrite my own take on various stories that appear on other sites, only sometimes even pasting in an excerpt.  I discriminate in my selections. So, instead, is Matt Cutts saying that I could just save a ton of time by just making a sentence of commentary and then paste in an excerpt? I guess so. (Yes, I know my blog is better for readers if I do it as I am now, that's not the issue).

Still, he's contradicting himself on duplicate content.  And I still think it's hilarious (and confusing) that Cutts used DaringFireball as an example of how to curate. I'd at least think he should have pulled a site as an example that maybe writes a couple paragraphs, then some excerpt and then maybe a closing paragraph.

Okay, I read an interview somewhere this week where Matt Cutts said he didn't care much for curated content.  Today I searched on that subject and came up with the following video of his:

http://youtu.be/zZU7O1BHfyo

So, in the video he is going along and saying not to just grab content and repost it.  And then at around minute 3:15 he says that, on the other hand, you can have a blog like DaringFireball.net and that's a good thing, because the blogger takes the time to pick and choose what he is posting.

I went to Daring Fireball to take a look, and I saw that he writes maybe one line of commentary, and then pastes in a big chunk of the curated content along with a link to the source.

This shocked me. How could Matt like that blog -- he keeps telling that he likes original not duplicate, curated content.  So, the difference is that a blog can get away with this if they exercise discretion in what they choose to copy and paste?  How the hell would the Google algorithm know what the intention of the blogger is?

And here I've been wasting my time writing up paragraphs and paragraphs to precede any excerpts I paste in, in fear of getting hit by Google.

I'd like to hear your comments on this.

Interesting that in DuckDuckGo.com and StartPage.com it is showing with the new title wording, and in increased position (#3 on DuckDuckGo.com).  Still not up there in google.

Any idea if this means anything?

"it would not drop off the index"

My apologies, I did say that but I meant it dropped off the rankings, not even in top 1000 now) I edited my question now to be more accurate.

1. Has the site lost rankings for other pages?

I don't think so.

2. Has anything else been done that might have an impact on rankings (i.e adding links, removing links)?

Nothing else has been changed.

3. When you paste the URL in Google, does it come up as the first search result? If so, it was not dropped from the index.

Yes.

4. Is the keywords still at the beginning of the title tag?

Yes.

5. Is there another page on the site that now ranks for the site? You may have more than one page on the site targeting the same keyword.

No

I was helping out someone on their site and its home page ranked on page 2 for their term, and the title tag was horrible. It was 160 characters long with lots of near repetitive keywords ([keyword] - adjective [keyword] - adjective [keyword] - adjective [keyword] etc.) -- typical title that Google would penalize when it got around to it.

So I created a title that made sense, for the keyword, and that followed the best practices of Google recommendations.  Now it's dropped off the index. (EDIT: sorry, still in index, just not even in top 1000)

Is this something I should not have done?  I was just trying to keep them from getting slammed.

And, how long should I expect it to take to get my ranking back?

This is the only page title I changed.

Thank you for the response.

"I'd build a new adsense site on Lowcarddiet.com but I'd host it with a different company so I don't get penalized for having the same C block address for both sites."

That damn Adsense is always a problem.  Making new entities is such a pain in California with the $800 LLC fee.  But it can be done, with or without an LLC.  I've faced this before and always end up thinking it's not worth the hassle.

"Finally the most important question is whether you already have a presence on the first page for that keyword, if you've got the number one spot I would justify making the effort of getting another site there, if not then your time might be better spent improving your rank for that keyword."

It's in the top five now, however, this keyword is going to be getting a ton more competition in the near future, and I'm thinking the EMD would really help.

(Fictional domain names and keywords follow)

Let's say I have an Adense site called Diets.com  And on that site I've got 10 pages for the ten most popular diets, and each of those pages is optimized for the diet name.  Let's imagine one of these pages is called, "The low-carb diet."

Then I went out and purchased the domain name LowCarbDiet.com.

How do I best use this new domain name?

My options seem to be:

1. Build an adsense site on LowCarbDiet.com.

But isn't it a problem when the the same owner of LowCardDiet.com and Diets.com are trying to rank for the same keyword? The new site would be trying to rank for "low carb diet" and so would the appropriate page on Diets.com. I think Google doesn't like this. True?

2. Make a one-page introductory informational site with no ads on the new LowCarbDiet.com.  Have a prominent link from that site to the appropriate page on Diets.com for the reader to get "further information."

This link with the proper anchor text should help boost the page in Diets.com in the SERPs.  IF Google doesn't dislike that.

SO...is one idea better than the other? Are neither a good idea? Is there a better way to utilize this new domain?  It's important because this second domain name's keyword is about to get a huge amount of search traffic.

The new, parked domain name is currently registered in the same name as the existing site's name. I could change the registration or privacy it, but I assume Google maintains records of all past registered owners, and if so, I can't really hide ownership.

On a wordpress site, I have one blog post that performs extremely well for Adsense revenue.  But the post is getting older and older, and requires me to place some updates into the article from time to time. It's a blog post, but really feels like more of a reference types page (it's about stocks in a particular industry).

Now that I see so many people landing on this page through search (#1 for the term), I'm thinking I really should really develop this information further, and make a reference page out of this information and keep it updated, with a link to it from the nav menu.

However, I don't know if it will be bad to have both the reference page and the old post page trying to rank for the same keyword term or not? (They won't be duplicate content, the new page will just the same topic rewritten and expanded). Is that something I can get penalized for?

I'm getting very good income off of this existing blog post and don't want to mess it up, but I also know that only keeping this info on a post that's getting older and older is not a good long term plan, and I need to pounce on the interest in the subject matter.

So, I see these options:

1. Create the new expanded page, and let Google sort it in the SERPs.

2. Create the new page and redirect the old blog post to the new page.  That just doesn't seem right to remove access to my old blog post, though.

Which of these is the right thing to do, or is there some way I'm not thinking of?