Concerns of Duplicative Content on Purchased Site

[PetSite]

Recently I purchased a site of 50+ DA (oldsite.com) that had been offline/404 for 9-12 months from the previous owner.  The purchase included the domain and the content previously hosted on the domain.  The backlink profile is 100% contextual and pristine.

Upon purchasing the domain, I did the following:

1. Rehosted the old site and content that had been down for 9-12 months on oldsite.com
2. Allowed a week or two for indexation on oldsite.com
3. Hosted the old content on my newsite.com and then performed 100+ contextual 301 redirects from the oldsite.com to newsite.com using direct and wild card htaccess rules
4. Issued a Press Release declaring the acquisition of oldsite.com for newsite.com
5. Performed a site "Change of Name" in Google from oldsite.com to newsite.com
6. Performed a site "Site Move" in Bing/Yahoo from oldsite.com to newsite.com

It's been close to a month and while organic traffic is growing gradually, it's not what I would expect from a domain with 700+ referring contextual domains.  My current concern is around original attribution of content on oldsite.com shifting to scraper sites during the year or so that it was offline.

For Example:

1. Oldsite.com has full attribution prior to going offline
2. Scraper sites scan site and repost content elsewhere (effort unsuccessful at time because google know original attribution)
3. Oldsite.com goes offline
4. Scraper sites continue hosting content
5. Google loses consumer facing cache from oldsite.com (and potentially loses original attribution of content)
6. Google reassigns original attribution to a scraper site
7. Oldsite.com is hosted again and Google no longer remembers it's original attribution and thinks content is stolen
8. Google then silently punished Oldsite.com and Newsite.com (which it is redirected to)

QUESTIONS

1. Does this sequence have any merit? Does Google keep track of original attribution after the content ceases to exist in Google's search cache?
2. Are there any tools or ways to tell if you're being punished for content being posted else on the web even if you originally had attribution?
3. Unrelated:  Are there any other steps that are recommend for a Change of site as described above.

[seomozinator]

Hi, John.

Ok, there is a q/a video of matt cutts answering the question about "originality" of content in terms of if bigger website copies content from smaller author-website. (Can't find the link to it, may be other MOZers will help out here). Matt said that yes, it's possible. So, as far as I understand, Google can reassign original attribution. Especially, if your website was offline for long time.

At the same time, here is a Matt Cutts' video about duplicate content as a penalizing factor - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQZY7EmjbMA

According to that video, unless you're very spammy scraper, you are going to be fine in terms of duplicate.

About slow gain of rankings - having lots of referring domains is not the guarantee of fast or good rankings. It surely helps a lot, but it's not the only thing. Have you optimized content, technical SEO etc? As of tools for penalties - use Google Webmaster tools - manual action section. If there is nothing there, you haven't been penalized by google

About any recommendations - well, as I said, update/optimize content if needed, get your technical SEO in order. Since you said the rankings are growing and it has been a month since you've launched website - you're doing pretty good. It always requires time, my friend.

Hope this helps.