[Pete Svarrior]

Currently, the Wiki has two pages on lunar phases:

-Phases of the Moon redirects to a section of the Electromagnetic Acceleration page
-The Phases of the Moon appears to be a separate page, which also includes a link to the EA page for more details.

Is the page starting with "The" necessary, or should it be merged?

[Tom Bishop]

Currently, the Wiki has two pages on lunar phases:

-Phases of the Moon redirects to a section of the Electromagnetic Acceleration page
-The Phases of the Moon appears to be a separate page, which also includes a link to the EA page for more details.

Is the page starting with "The" necessary, or should it be merged?

"The Phases of The Moon" comes up first on Google for the phrase "flat earth moon phases" and similar terms relating to phases. It would be ideal to just leave it, as to keep that. Better would be a dedicated page without the "The" at the top of google.

Perhaps the dedicated page can be improved or expanded on.

SMF really needs to make it more clear that you are editing another person's post instead of quoting them.

[Pete Svarrior]

SMF really needs to make it more clear that you are editing another person's post instead of quoting them.

We should be able to add a warning of some sort. I'll look into that.

"The Phases of The Moon" comes up first on Google for the phrase "flat earth moon phases" and similar terms relating to phases. It would be ideal to just leave it, as to keep that. Better would be a dedicated page without the "The" at the top of google.

Perhaps the dedicated page can be improved or expanded on.

How about this?

• "The[...]" becomes a redirect to a dedicated page without the "The"
• (This should keep Google happy - it will follow the redirect and should preserve good positioning of the new page)
• For now, this dedicated page simply inherits the content of the current one, with a prominent link to the EA page
• All other pages that reference lunar phases link to this dedicated page
• The page can then be expanded over time

[Tom Bishop]

Are you sure that will keep Google happy? The redirect pages seem to only have the title as the content for the page on Google.

There are other websites besides us dedicated to the flat Earth moon phases: https://www.flat-earth-moon-phases.com/

Do you think that a page with only the title as its contents, "Phases of the Moon" will outrank a website like that? I have yet to see a redirect page show up as a high ranking in Google Search, which is why I think combining the pages may not be the best idea.

There are alternatives. We can expand on the page with additional information about the phases. There is surely more that could be said about the phases than a paragraph and a couple of images on the EA page. That EA page description should just be a summary anyway.

The phases also rotate in weird ways over the night (Moon Tilt Illusion). And there are some questions about timing between the phases. Unfortunately making a page out of the anomalies takes work.

We could also just leave it as be.

[Pete Svarrior]

Are you sure that will keep Google happy?

Yes. The FAQ was moved that way multiple times, and it never caused an issue. A redirect page, when visited directly, will simply pull the content of the destination page, while also notifying the client that the page has been moved. Google handles these quite well.

Do you think that a page with only the title as its contents, "Phases of the Moon" will outrank a website like that?

I think you're misunderstanding. The only page that Google will keep track of is the final page - while keeping any ranking data it's already collected in the past. Functionally, this is simply a URL change.

which is why I think combining the pages may not be the best idea.

Generally, the opposite is true. Larger informative pages rank better than small pages with plenty of links. Of course, there's is a point where pages become too long and splitting is desirable, but we're nowhere near that point yet. Each time we've merged a bunch of small pages (leaving appropriate redirects behind), the net result was more visits to the combined page, compared to prior traffic to smaller disjointed pages.

I have yet to see a redirect page show up as a high ranking in Google Search

That's because their positioning gets transferred to the destination page. The redirect only serves as a vehicle through which this occurs (and as a means of maintaining compatibility with external sites that may be linking to our articles). This is as intended - Google shouldn't be indexing the redirects, it should simply make sure that the final page is reached correctly.

[Tom Bishop]

Actually, on review, I was mistaken about what you were doing. I was somehow under the impression that you were going to ax the moon phase page and just redirect to the moon phase section on the EA page.

In that case, yes, there should be one dedicated page. Feel free to make the changes suggested. What you suggested would be for the best.

[Pete Svarrior]

No problem. I didn't phrase it very clearly, so my bad.

Phases of the Moon is now the primary page on the subject. We may want to think about whether or not some of the content from the EA page should be moved over, but that can be a more long-term consideration.

[Pete Svarrior]

I also manually refreshed Google's index for those pages - looks like everything went to plan, the new page is now the prominent result.