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Hey John, I hope you will get a reply from someone with hands-on experience with directory development, which I don't have, but here's what I think: Obviously, Yahoo has been using Yelp reviews for some time (http://www.webpronews.com/yelp-reviews-no-longer-appearing-in-yahoo-local-results-2015-08) so there's nothing inherently wrong with the idea. On the other hand, yes, you'd be republishing someone else's content on your own site. So, I can see the cause for concern. That being said, yes, it could be that a different engine like Google is going to recognize that as coming from big Yelp and it might not be a problem, but I wouldn't bank on this if it were my company. Finally, the strategy seems a bit iffy to me, to use Yelp's content if you are trying to build a directory that competes with Yelp for your niche. I think the ideal here for your platform would be to build its own value. After all, you have no control over how a third party vets reviews, filters them, trusts them, etc. Yelp's take on this isn't your take and you may have totally different requirements for assessing the value of UGC. Again, hope you'll get some further replies on this, but I wanted to at least get the conversation going. I hope folks will disagree with me if they have a totally different take on this. John's question is a very good one!

Hi, John. Ok, there is a q/a video of matt cutts answering the question about "originality" of content in terms of if bigger website copies content from smaller author-website. (Can't find the link to it, may be other MOZers will help out here). Matt said that yes, it's possible. So, as far as I understand, Google can reassign original attribution. Especially, if your website was offline for long time. At the same time, here is a Matt Cutts' video about duplicate content as a penalizing factor - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQZY7EmjbMA According to that video, unless you're very spammy scraper, you are going to be fine in terms of duplicate. About slow gain of rankings - having lots of referring domains is not the guarantee of fast or good rankings. It surely helps a lot, but it's not the only thing. Have you optimized content, technical SEO etc? As of tools for penalties - use Google Webmaster tools - manual action section. If there is nothing there, you haven't been penalized by google About any recommendations - well, as I said, update/optimize content if needed, get your technical SEO in order. Since you said the rankings are growing and it has been a month since you've launched website - you're doing pretty good. It always requires time, my friend. Hope this helps.