I think what may be happening is that you said you're looking in Google Analytics for it but the steps say to check Google Webmaster Tools.

My favorite answer... Canonicals. If your trade partner's site places rel="canonical" tags pointing back to the original source of the content on your site then there shouldn't be any duplicate content issue. Of course Canonicals are suggestions not directives so the search engines reserve the right not to follow the tag if they deem it irrelevant. Using the tag in this way will essentially pass all the equity to your site and rank your page instead of your trade partner. Your trade partner would basically get no benefit of having your content as far as Search is concerned. The better option for everyone would likely be to write unique and relevant content.

If all the meta description said was "Visit www.blah.com today" then I'd be more worried about it not being interesting or descriptive enough to grab a user's attention.

In the upper right-hand corner by "Campaigns & Tools" there's the symbol that looks like a Head with a few lines next to it. Click that and in the dropdown is "Billing & Subscription". On that page you'll find a link to Cancel.

I do often agree with your assessment and perhaps I should have worded it as "you might want to consider" instead of "make sure".

Its because in certain circumstances, having a blog post about something like "5 Reasons the New Toshiba Laptop is Awesome" with a link to your ecommerce page selling the product could be considered a paid link or the post may be seen as an advertorial. Because you sell laptops and you're writing a blog post about laptops that includes a link to the sale of laptops on your own site, there is concern it _migh_t be devalued especially after all the news concerning press release links and advertorials in recent months.

Of course, much of this is conjecture and the more I think about it the more it would seem that the people I've seen concerned about being hit for something like that are people that have been doing other, more sketchy things.

I've always been more of an "if they cannibalized then cross-link" type of person, followed up with a hint of "tweak accordingly". If our blogs are ranking well for something and drawing in more people than the actual product page, it could be that more people are just looking for information and not necessarily purchasing... of course there's the AIDA conversion funnel to consider as well. Why not make sure there is a prominent link/call to action that users can follow once they're done digesting the info so then they can look at the product page and (hopefully) convert? And make sure the link is NoFollow or it could be seen as unnatural and/or inadvertently hurt you depending on Google guidelines for the given month/week/day.

NoFollows on links in your blog that point off the site are not hurting you.