Man, please don't sue me if this doesn't work, but I say go for it.

Think about it like this. What's to stop a competitor from getting a bunch of those links, wait til a site is penalized and then redirecting it to you? Nothing. It's unlikely I think, and quite the investment but it could happen, right?

Plus, if you're getting hit because your links look shotty to Google, then wouldn't a redirect to a well-established site help to curb that perception.

I vote do it. But seriously, let me know how it goes.

It's a little difficult to tell right now (and even if they do, to what extent).

They are also pushing schema.org a bit themselves along with the other SE's, so I think (and am currently betting) that they would use this info instead, or with more priority.

The Schema.org tags allow you to get specific with not only the item (an image) but with it's context as well (an image of the author, or an image of a specific product, broken down by type, and so on).

It's all still in dev and about the only thing I've read from Google regarding its impact is along the lines of:

"We aren't saying it will increase your rankings. But this stuff will help us better catalog the Interwebs, which will help us better serve the users who search in our SE."

One could infer that Google ranks sites that are better for users higher, and so this would impact it. But you know how they are their official responses.

This is a bit of a tricky one. If you're really able to keep them separated then you should be fine. After all, many people download the same WP themes from not only their repository, but from third-party places like themeforest.

Just to be safe though, I would really make sure they are different; regarding sidebar content, etc. I would also make some changes to the heads and footers. Not just the meta, but placement of code, inclusion/exclusion of pieces, etc. Really get in there and make sure.

Honestly though, I don't know what your niche/strategy is; but you're going to have your hands full promoting 10 sites of the same type. If this is an attempt to get them all to rank for the same searches, I would re-consider your strategy. Google is pretty good at figuring that stuff out, especially if a competitor points them in your direction. It can be difficult enough to promote just one site sometimes, let alone having to also worry about what flags you may be throwing up with each of 10 sites.

If you're still going to do it, I would be super paranoid about it. Log into Google Analytics from different computers, never speak about them to people, and each time you meet someone, give them a fake name. I'm certain Google's street view cameras are equipped with microphones to catch spammers on ground-level. But maybe I only think that because the aliens told me....and what do they know about SEO?

It's always so hard to get a straight answer on this. There isn't much in the way of an official one from Google (of course), and I've experienced what I think to be both results (penalty passed, and penalty not passed).

Personally, I think it has a lot to do with the penalty, etc.

More importantly though, why do you think it has been penalized. You mention that it hasn't completely lost visibility, but you've lost rankings. There are many things that can cause that.

First, I would check this vid to get a grasp on your situation:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-oh-i-got-a-penalty

If you still think you have a penalty it can be a bit tricky. Like I said, I constantly hear debates on this, and have anecdotedly seen both results. It's tough to test really.

I would take a step back and put the SEO goggles down. Ask yourself "How do I genuinely fix this situation?" Not the penalty itself, but the cause of the penalty. If you think a 301 is your best hope, then go for it.

As for actually redirecting the penalty, I don't think that's going to happen...unless you did something really naughty. Rather I think people 301 without fixing the underlying issues, and when they get penalized they assume that it was transferred via the redirect.

I'm pretty interested though. Let us know what happens/what you decide to do.

Hey David,

Man, you certainly have your ducks in a row. I have a couple questions for you to consider. It's kinda weird dealing with Google Places as so much is so inconsistent sometimes. It can be so many little things that impact rankings.

How old are your citations? If you have competition that had tons of citations for a long time, and your client recently got theirs; it won't matter how many you have for just a bit. There's going to be a small element of waiting. Give it a month, see what happens.

How does you client's location relate to the competition? If they are all closer to the city center, and your client is much farther, that's usually the culprit. Then, you're going to have to over-accommodate a bit (which it actually sounds like you're doing, so good on ya).

Generally speaking, the shared space shouldn't hold you back. I say shouldn't because by design Google should be showing "locations at this address" depending on your search. If you have sufficient citations to confirm your address, address on the site, etc. then you should be ok. You can test it though.

Look at a few of the other businesses with the same address and search for their keywords (just like a....GASP...common user...yuck). See how they perform compared to their competition. It's a lot of digging, but if you see that there are places at that address that do indeed perform, then you know that it should be ok.

If you only see one listing that performs, and all the others do not, then you might have some issues. But from the way you describe it, you're already "performing" on some level, so I think you should be ok.

Let me know if my thoughts so far aren't it. I wanna hear more.

OK cool. So we know that the address isn't specifically the problem.

When I say over-accommodate, I mean that sometimes I get clients who aren't even close to the city center. In those cases, we have to build substantially more citations, etc. to compete.

So let's look at those aspects. I can't believe I didn't ask you about reviews. Those are pretty important. Does your client have more, fewer, on-par reviews? Tab up the negative reviews vs. positive. Do you respond to any negatives?

I did a lawyer not long ago and I remember Google pulling judysbook reviews. And sometimes from NOLO. But I think Google doesn't pull from other sources like they used to (sorry Yelp). See if you have any links to more reviews. You might not actually see the reviews, but there will be a link for "reviews from around the web" or similar. If you see that there are listings to third-party reviews that your client doesn't have, get those. Hell, even if your competition doesn't have them, I would still head to Judy's Book and nolo and get listed, and try to solicit reviews as much as you can.

The reviews on the Google Places page are going to be more prominent/important, but those still have an impact.

I would keep the address as you have it. At this point it's more important to keep it as consistent as possible than to try and change it now.

While you're at it, where are you on the GPlace Page itself? Have videos and images? All that stuff? Don't stop when it says "100% complete" fill up the image and videos spots the best you can.

Alright, let me know about the reviews and completeness. I would try to get the "basics" as out of the way as possible.

I wrote (however ugly it may be) an eBook on this exact thing. Get all the foundation stuff under control first then poke at the detailed issues. I may be sending you on a goose chase for a second though as it sounds like you have this part under wraps. Just in case: http://seo-factor.com/ranking-in-google-places/