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stcrim - What do you mean by "had to roll the site back"? Also, how long ago was this?

Without further information, this database problem does seem to be the most likely cause. Sometimes, after a glitch like this, it takes Google a while to sort things out.

Also, have you checked that it is in fact a penalty? Have you completely disappeared from the index, or just for competitive searches? Have you tried searching with the dupe filter disabled?

Take a look at the Hot Topics [webmasterworld.com] section, pinned to the top of the Google Search forum home page, and look at the "Penalties, Sandbox, and Trust" section. In particular, I'd start with this post....

Thank you! After 10 years at this it feels funny having to figure out a G penalty. I stay out of that territory at all cost.

I had a corrupt database, as a result ended up rolling the site back about 3 days. Could the page time-stamp have thrown Google off enough to have the site sink temporarily?

The traffic fade started just after that. In Google Webmaster tools there are 9 404s related to page that did not get replaced after the roll-back. No other errors show.

I did www.[my-domain-name].com and only found people linking to me. However site:my-domain-name.com shows all my pages are still in the index.

Is it possible this will clear up as the time-stamp is replaced with future spidering?