taberstruths - 6:04 am on Mar 18, 2013 (gmt 0)

Seeing partial recovery Sunday 3/17 up 20% over the average of the last 2 months

Changes made;
Moved evergreen lists of references to my niche to a subdomain with related 2 keywords. Used canonical link to subdomain and no indexed them on the main site
Moved commentary on other articles that included quotes from article that was commented on from my niche to subdomain with 1 keyword. Used canonical link to subdomain and no indexed them on the main site
Removed 301 redirects from old url structure of 1 year ago
Subdomains have links to main domain in footer navigation bar
Made the entire site no follow on all outbound links.
Created new domain in same niche but totally a social network using buddypress. Footer links stating that "new domain" is part of the "penalized domain" family of websites. 1200 members in 2 months.

My reasoning for doing all of this.

1. If the lists of references on different subjects was considered duplicate content across the internet, then moving to subdomain would remove penalty.
2. If the quotes from other articles in the commentary was considered duplicate content then again moving them would remove the penalty.
3. If there were too many 301 redirects and they cause a penalty then removing them would end the penalty. If there were
4. Both removing the 301 redirects and using a canonical link and a no index would break any negative links that might be pointing to the pages that have been penalized.
5. Placing no follow links on every outbound link would eliminate any appearance of selling links.
6. Creating a new site in the same niche but with a different purpose would cause a larger footprint in the niche, show that the old domain was part of a larger and more authoritative group of websites, and create links that were natural for a sister website to produce. Every big brand has links in the footer to it's other websites.
7. The social network for our niche causes us to have a way to keep and cultivate return visitors and produce visitor loyalty not only to the social network but to the old domain which is informational as well. So far since Jan 21st, it has an average of 8 pages per visit, 70% return visitor per day, less than 30% bounce rate and 12 plus minutes per visit. I believe it will be viewed as quality linking to quality.