Google dupe content penalty... permanent?

[born2drv]

I have one main site that has very high rankings. I like the way the database is structured and the templates are easy to modify, so I copied it and started to slowly change things for my new site.

Problem is, I think I tripped a dupe content filter because Google has seen it in the transition phase and the content isn't totally changed yet, so it still resembles the original site somewhat. But it's been over 4 months in the working (I have been rather slow making this site) and it still has PR0, no backlinks and no rankings. All my sites are hosted on the same server with the same WHOIS info.

So what do I do now...

1. Keep on changing it over slowly and hope once I remove all the duplicated content that the penalty gets lifted?

2. Just finish the site, ditch the domain, register a new one and host it somewhere else with unique WHOIS info and hope Google picks it up this time?

I can't stress enough, when the new site is finished, it will be totally different from the original one it was copied from, selling a completely different type of widgets. But right now it's 50% converted, 50% dupe content still.

And in the future, if I want to make a different site again, how do I prevent this problem from happening? Ban all bots in the robots.txt until the site is completely finished and ready to be "judged" by the Google Gods?

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

[AjiNIMC]

born2drv, I do the same, I have few sites and i keep the page structure same (left side, right side, top side, bottom note, center text.....) but I ban the robots with this simple code

# applies to all robots
User-agent: *
# disallow indexing of all pages
Disallow: /

And when I finish the work, i get some good links to the pages and it get indexed in few days

Aji

[Powdork]

Maybe I missed it, but have your rankings suffered or are you worried because it was crawled?
As I'm guessing you are aware, if it dropped around the 15th of last month......