Merging 2 sites that had penalties removed/have disavow files

[Shepherd]

OK, I know no one here has the definitive answer to this but I thought I would through it out for discussion.

2 sites (A and B, both had manual penalties removed by submitting disavow files and reconsideration requests.

We are merging (301) site A to site B. In doing this whatever authority, links, and traffic the goes to A will now go to B.

But, but, but, site A's disavow file, does that transfer to site B, I don't think that it would. Could that be an issue for site B? Should site A's disavow file be merged with site B's at the same time site A is 301'd to site B?

[1script]

I wouldn't worry about disavows. Just keep a copy of site A's disavow file to be ready to submit should you feel the need in the future. I would be much more worried about the penalties never *actually* going away, even after receiving the "revoked" notices. I've a site that has by now not seen an improvement in 9 months since the "revoked" notice and in fact has just been hit with yet another penalty, or so it seems, since another 70% of whatever traffic remained is gone over this weekend.

[Robert Charlton]

Does site A actually have enough "authority, (good) links, and traffic" to justify the merger? The redirect would IMO be transferring penalties.

If I did this, I think I'd send a combined disavow file, just so Google doesn't think you're trying to hide something with the redirect.

[Shepherd]

Does site A actually have enough "authority, (good) links, and traffic" to justify the merger?

Great question. This was more of a business decision than an seo decision. site A is greenwidgets.com and site B is widgets.com. maintaining them both has become less productive than it once was so now we merge.

enough:
authority- yes
good links- no
traffic- yes
content- yes

I've been leaning towards merging the disavow file also, but I might just wait to see if we get a manual penalty on site B first.