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David - Thank you for explaining more clearly, it's really appreciated! If all major keywords have dropped 5-10 spots, it seems that your traffic must be down quite a bit, not to mention brand exposure. I would submit a reinclusion request. I would be totally transparent, tell them what you have done to try to get the links removed, but also tell them that you did not build these links. Show them what links you are responsible for. Unfortunately there is no way to know how long it will take for your client to recover. It's possible that they will be sandboxed for a while. What I would recommend doing is moving forward to building really good links for them, trying to get good press coverage, and try to get in contact with someone on the spam team to review your case. John

As Ben and RDK shared, your transition plan is solid. Is there a way (the above plan or any other) to make sure ranking will not be hurt If you have links, there will always be some loss of DA during the transition. Approximately 90% of the link value will transfer with the 301, but there is some degradation. This can be minimized by changing any links you control to the new site. This includes social media pages, signatures, etc. Another recommendation I make to anyone moving sites is to create a link building campaign 30 days after the site move to generate links to the new site. These links will help offset any minor loss from the move. If the move is done properly, you can be back to your old rankings or better within 60 days after the move. What entries should I add to the sitemap.xml: new pages only or new pages and the pages from the old site? A sitemap should include all pages on the new site you wish to be included in the index. One final note. Since you are changing URLs during this move, think out the new URLs carefully. Try to build URLs which will last 20 years. Try to account for any foreseeable changes. One example is to remove technology extensions from URLS. Instead of mysite.com/products.html use mysite.com/products.

Besides what Ryan said, I'd also add that they still need to clearly convey that they're links to those social media sites. I've seen some customized icons that have gone too far on the stylistic side and they were impossible to tell what they were for.

There is not an official answer. It would be proprietary information from Google. Google collects an incredible amount of data and is able to use any and all of it to configure customized search for what they deem to be a better user experience. Some examples (the basics) user location past user searches from their Google account past user searches from their pc (cache) Google gathers tons of additional information and can use any of it to further customize a search. For example, if you search for "clearing browser cache" then Google COULD determine what browser you are using and automatically use that information to add "Firefox" or your browser name to the query. In my latest test they were not making this change. Google provides the Chrome browser which is popular and collects even more information. They also provide free Wi-Fi service which collects a lot of data. Additionally they collect a ton of other data such as your hardware configuration, software and more.

I just noticed that some of your pages are indexed under www.dentistinlittlerock.com and some with out the www's at dentistinlittlerock.com. This could be why you are not seeing them all indexed in your webmaster tools.  Webmaster tools see these as two different sites. You should set up a 301 redirect to have them all go to one domain(either www.dentistinlittlerock.com or dentistinlittlerock.com).  This should fix it.