Google dilemma

[cbp]

If I move it, then on the next crawl, Google will receive a 404 error because it was expecting to see a page at the location where it was indexed so far.

Google won't get a 404 error unless there is still a link to the old page for it to follow.

CBP

[bogdan_i]

Originally Posted by cbp

Google won't get a 404 error unless there is still a link to the old page for it to follow.

CBP

I get your point, but what if there is an external link to the old page, from a 3rd party site (so I can't fix it)? Of course, it is not good for the site who is linking to the old URL (as it's a broken link), but will Google also penalize my site? Hmm, but my thinking must be wrong, because if Google would penalize my site, it means someone might easily damage other sites, by linking to non-existing URLs of those sites...

[adore]

Google cannot penalize you for getting 404 code.
Spiders try several times to index the page. If they cannot find page at that time (that is they always get 404) and they see that this code repeats over a specific period (in order to avoid dropping site because of temporary server's break downs), they will simply drop the site from index during the next update.
In addition to the possibility of hurting someone's site - I don't there is any chance to make your competitor's site hurt. Otherwise it would became very popular :)