Could 301 redirects from a page that you removed to a page that has a similar - but not an exact topic - cause problems with Panda and Penguin - even of those pages DIDN'T have inbound links?

While I don't have exact evidence on what you say Planet13, I've been having troubles with a portal relaunched with thousands of redirects in place. The traffic from Google has stayed still since droping after relaunch but with different sets of keywords sending traffic daily.

(hard to tell with Google hiding keyword data but checked this with viewing certain 'not provided' landing pages and 'provided' keyword/landing page data)

I think the redirects are to blame for this situation which has stayed the same for the past 2 and a half months, but still uncertain. Also wouldn't redirect to similar pages, having too many redirects pointing to a single page (homepage or not) can be harmful IMHO.

But that's my take... Think Google is concerned with too many redirects simply because a great deal of black hatters have abused them heavily in recent times.

It could well be other factors in my case which are not relevant to redirects, such as a thousand pages of content (old press releases) have been removed & 404ed and hundreds of content pages still being not published while the editors freshen them up.

@ mcskoufis

Also wouldn't redirect to similar pages, having too many redirects pointing to a single page (homepage or not) can be harmful IMHO... Think Google is concerned with too many redirects simply because a great deal of black hatters have abused them heavily in recent times.

I tend to agree with those thoughts.