I have 4 domains on the same ip with variants of the same content. They target the same service but in different areas, I have used no outrageously black hat SEO techniques.

I recently moved my main site to a dedicated ip address… It has plummeted to the obis were as the other sites sharing the original ip address remain in position in the SERPS.

At the same time I refocused the keywords I was targeting, from ‘widgetness in location’ to ‘widget in location’, I have (IMO) enough established inbound links with this new key phase to support this new variant of keywords. For both my old keywords and new I am very low and steadily dropping, currently around 300-400.

I accept this drop as necessary to achieve higher rankings in the future, however my question is:

What is the likely hood this is due to duplicate content filter over simply re-indexing. My site is always crawled a couple of times a month and has been well index by Google.

Should I have done anything differently, should I drop the other domains on the old ip address or transfer them to the new ip address… or 301 redirect them to the new domain.

Perhaps I should revert back to the old ip address! I don’t think this is a possibility; I never received a huge amount of traffic.

I look forward to your thoughts!