tedster - 2:12 am on Sep 19, 2011 (gmt 0)

I resonate with one part of your post, MrSavage. There is a threshold of kinds, below which a site doesn't get much attention. I believe it depends, at least in part, on how many impressions the domain is getting in the SERPs - and that is dependent on search volume plus ranking.

Human evaluators only look at the SERPs that are above a certain volume. In fact, I'm convinced there are also parts of the algo that only operate above a search certain volume. So as long as a site is ranking well on a low volume search - it doesn't really get much scrutiny, either human or algorithmic.

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You said the new domain ended up being just one page, albeit a very long one. I think that factor might be working against you very strongly.

However, that alone wouldn't really account for a true penalty. Does your site link out? If it does, might Google see it as a doorway page?