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Hi Cyrus,

Thank you for your detailed answer!

By the way, I enjoyed your informative presentation at MozCon 2012, value and trust your opinion, and have enjoyed reading your posts.

I will pass your wisdom on to our CEO for consideration.

Thanks again!

Thank you!

It would continue to be a full, interactive web app, not a one page website.  It would have a variation of the original brand name, however.

Company A's domain would likely host a page describing the acquisition, but would remain in place and continue to be the destination for conversions of Company A's products.

Company B may want to change the business name of company A.  It may add it's own business name to company A's business name.  This would all get re-indexed and we're worried about possible ramifications.

Thank you for your thoughtful response, but I don't believe Company A's site will be forwarded to Company B's.  Rather, we are thinking that company B may inject some of their branding (company name, etc) into company A's site.  No forwarding will likely occur.

I have a couple questions for the SEOMOZ community - and/or it's leader, Rand, if at all possible   It is very important for us to have good information.

Scenario:

Company A:  National established leader in a niche product currently receives 49% of their traffic from branded keywords.  Company A wants to protect and further grow it's gains that have been made in SEO even after it is acquired by Company B.

Company B:  Is a much larger company that acquires Company A.

1.  What could happen to Google rankings when company A is bought out and Company B changes the registered owner and whois record?  Could Google see this as a signal that the ownership has changed and then re-evaluate the ranking of Company A's website?

2.  What would most likely happen if company B were to change the branding of Company A's established website?  Company A currently receives about half of it's traffic from branded keywords.  The acquiring company may want to change some of the SEO titles, ALT-Text, H1 tags, etc to also promote itself on the acquired company's site.

Thank you all in advance for your help!