dickbaker - 10:36 pm on Sep 26, 2008 (gmt 0)

Thanks again for your invaluable input.

I was about to switch to a VPS server when the sales person suggested I talk to yet another tech support person. The tech guy was certain that a 301 as well as a https redirect could be accomplished on the shared server I'm using. I'm hoping he's right, as I don't want to disrupt anything right now.

I was dubious when the tech support guy said that https and http pointing to the same page wouldn't be considered duplicate content. I trust both of you more than someone whose knowledge of SEO is an unknown quantity (even if that tech person says he's been doing SEO for ten years).

One troublesome thing I saw today was that a page on my site had moved from #1 to #3 for the term "Acme red widgets." The #1 and #2 spots were taken by one of the big online shopping sites. More worrisome, though, was that the page had moved from #31 for "Acme widgets" to oblivion. The page was holding both rankings well until Google used the https protocol.