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Hello Chris, you're absolutely right. It took me a while to conceptualize the process, but referring to projects where I've used 301's to redirect one URL to another helped me realize that I perform the task almost on a daily bases. The one twist that's a first for me is that of redirecting URL's from an active domain to another. A note to readers that may have a similar question - the 301 redirect is implemented on the donor domain and not on the receiving domain (where content is being move to) explaining why the URL can no longer exist on the donor domain. With much appreciation, thank you.

Hello Lance, please pardon the belated reply. Your answer is very precise, thanks for elaborating in such detail. Number 7 - "410 errors are reportedly a bit faster at getting content removed" - is a gem. I see the logic behind # 8, makes lots of sense, and so does number 9. Nice recipe for a recovery. Again, thank you for the insight.

Hello EGOL, thanks for the resources. I bookmarked both for later reference, especially the article written by Marie Haynes. I like to take a moment and update my findings. Earlier this morning, as I explored the subject site's hosting environment,  I found several backup copies of the site stored in "/home/alias". On a local host I restored the last backup and found that it did in fact undergo a restructuring of the URL's, not once but several times. Without looking further I suspect the site went through several (8) phases of restructuring and all within a period of 8 months making for linking and fluctuations in the SERP's. This leads to another question which I posted here on this forum.

You would think... Hey there Chris, thanks for contributing. I agree with everything you said, but something seems to be amiss with what's going on. There's the "should be", if we go by Google, and there's the "what is", when we look at how things really play out in the real world of ranking. I don't want to beat a dead horse, the subject has been brought up many times before on how so many websites  seem to get away with what appears to be blunt infractions of Google's rules, but in all honesty, I never before had to consider hallmarks as a competing factor, I don't even know how they're perceived by search engines. How would a website designer who builds high quality sites but in small numbers compete with a designer who spits out low quality sites in high numbers? Should hallmarks be a contributing factor? Do they have a rightful place in influencing rank?