Number of indexed pages dropped and not recovering

[Recycled]

I do not know if my website is penalized by Google or not. The site was fully indexed for the past few years and then suddenly the pages started to drop in mid April and the page drop stabilized by mid May. It settled at around 200 pages from a peak of about 16,000 pages. For the past week everyday the indexed pages increases by about 1-2 pages. At this rate I had to wait for next 20 years to get it fully indexed. :(

The following are changes to the site over the course of the past 6-8 months.

1. At the end of last year the URL links (in numbers) migrated to a name format, for example, widget.com/13432a.asp to widget/product_name.aspx. Unfortunately, I did not set up a redirect for all the old links to the new one. According to Google webmaster tool it is still crawling the old URL. For the past two years, I had been submitting a google sitemap every month.

2. I didn't do any link building for the past 2-3 years but I do get a few unrequested links from forums and blogs over the years but not too much. I had a small reciprocal link directory but I had not done any exchange for the past 2-3 years. I had it removed about a month ago after seeing my pages getting deindexed at rapid rate.

3. I have another site with same products and I had it linked to each other from the homepage. The homepage links were removed from both sites about a month ago. The product descriptions are the same (manufacturer provided) but the rest of the content are all different. I don't believe this should be a big problem. or is it? If it is then many of my competitors shouldn't be on the top of the SERP.

4. Today, I noticed when I do a search on my domain name 'example' the first result was 'www.example.com/index.aspx' instead of 'www.example.com/' as it appears all this year.

5. As for contents I do not have that much on my site but compared to competitors I had about the same.

6. the homepage is still PR2 (it was PR3 back in March)

Now can someone tell me if I had been penalized by Google for duplicate content due to two similar sites. Or is it because it takes time for it to re-index the new URL?

I thought about submitting a reconsideration request but from what I read it doesn't appear to be a good idea - it is more like last thing to do.

Should I submit a reconsideration request now?
Or should I wait for another month or so?
Or should I add some content to the site and then submit for a reconsideration request?
Or am I screwed and placed in the Recycle Bin by Google?

Thanks.
Recycled

[edited by: tedster at 4:21 am (utc) on May 31, 2009]
[edit reason] switch to example.com - it cannot be owned [/edit]

[longen]

You don't need to do a re-inclusion request but do need to 301 those old URL's to the new. Also 301 /index.asp to www.example.tld/
If those 16K pages were product pages similiar to that which thousand of other sites have then many might not come back.
Some new content and links always helps.

[Recycled]

Longen thanks for the answer. The site just dropped to a PR0 from PR2 overnight - it had a PR3 in early March. Fortunately, the it PR is 0 and it is not greyed out. I don't know if it has anything to with the canonical issue. Or just as I suspect Google is in the process of placing the site in the Recycle Bin.

I worked to increased backlinks a month ago when the indexed pages were getting dropped like a rock, and now it seems the more I do the worst it gets.

Do you guys think the site is on the way to the Google Jail?

-Recycled (by Google)