Merging 2 websites and Google

[followgreg]

Our company recently purchased a competitor.
So we would like to merge both sites under 1 unique brand as well.
Each site has a lot of unique content.

The problem is that both site are doing extremely well on Google.
and they both have tons of pages.

Would a page per page 301 from the old domain to the new domain affect drastically rankings in your opinion?

We are talking about 1 site increasing by a fold of 2 it's total number of pages so that worries me.

Did someone ever tried to merge 2 big sites in similar industries and managed to keep organic rankings each site had when separated?
i'd be interested to hear about that.

[ecmedia]

The experience that we have is moving blogs from blogspot to a domain. It worked out great using the Blogger's tool to move it. Google also took care of all the results but Yahoo and MSN, as usual, have no clue how the world works. They still lag behind.

In your situation, I would not suggest integration of the two sites unless you do not rely on organic traffic. It will just create a lot of mess and potentially loss of rankings. Personally, I would leave one website alone with a prominent message that displays on each page saying "Please also visit our other website." This can be done safely using javascript or if you use HTML link then put a nofollow tag.

[followgreg]

Good idea.
Now I have to convince the big guys in my company to place a huge message. Not sure about the JS, Google does weird things at the moment. I prefer not to take a risk.

[WiseWebDude]

I certainly would NOT take that risk right before the holiday seasons to be sure. Because you WILL lose rank and traffic for a while as Google takes it all in (possibly 3 - 6 mos.). I would leave well enough alone (harder to run two sites...but, you and your family will have a bigger turkey this season!). If you really need to do it, do so during the off-season. IMHO, of course.