Google use to love my WP blog, now it hates me...

It seems that you may miss some links and high-quality content? If you focus on these points, Google will not hate you.

It's a b****h when you have to rely on someone else for your business doesn't it?

Have you asked Google? I know that some people have gone directly to Google and asked them what they need to do or what they have done wrong - sometimes it is a case that a human review will alter the ranking. You have nothing to lose.

I'm looking at a new domain and starting over from scratch. There are lots of desirable .co names available. I have a shiny new Thesis theme I recently bought... those are suppose to be great for SEO out of the box.

I'm worried that my current wordpress theme (revolution by Brian Gardner - aka StudioPress) is outdated and causing issues that Google doesn't like.

Comments on Ehow are actually Facebook comments (It's an iframe).

Are you talking about the site in your signature? Because it doesn't look like a site that has 10s of thousands of dollars in it.

Same thing happened to one of my sites. I have an original site started in 2006, it consists of hundreds of pages with original content and most of the pages have 1000+ words. It has also 25000 links to the main domain, all natural links, haven't done any link building.

It received around 2500 uniques a day before April and after that i lost 50% of my traffic, now even more like what you say. Now it averages around 1000 unique visitors.

And the worst thing like you say, adsense ads are worthless, they are not targeted anymore and lost 90% of the sites income.

It's really disheartening to say the least.

Well the farmer update was done to penalize sites that are content farms and I can guess from your saying that your site contains a lot of content right? The problem is the pages which were used to rank previously because of just content got a jolt and were pushed down the rankings-same thing happened with about.com . Therefore you lost the visitors.Now the point to note is wikipedia still holds the rankings and it contains just content. I think you need to get some backlinks to all your pages instead of just your home page.Increasing the pagerank of the inner pages would help in increasing the rankings and hence traffic.
Search engines are getting smarter with every passing day

I am sorry for your loss, I have also lost my websites ranking. But since your websites have full or unique articles, I believe the traffic will come back.

Where did you get your 20,000 backlinks?

You seem to know what your doing, I know I've never had a 100,000 site.

JC Penny got busted to oblivion for link farms. I don't think it is your plugins. I don't think it is your tags (But checkout SEO Platinum, it might help you get rid of some of those others you're using). I had a problem with categories for a while, couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong but Webmaster tools was showing thousands of duplicate meta descriptions and titles. I still ranked well. Finally figured out I shouldn't have clicked canonical in SEO platinum as someone told me to do. That cleared that up. Clearly I had a conflicting setting but I didn't understand so I just did away with it. But it didn't matter.

Since your content is unique, it could also be how much advertising you had on your site. Part of the Panda update targeted that.

My major question remains to be did you get busted for building backlinks in the wrong way?

I've got a tiny little site that was making a few hundred a month. Then boom, Google slapped. Then it came back for a couple of days and google slapped it again. Then it came back again. LOL I wonder how it will do tomorrow. It is like Google keeps slapping it but it just pops right back up. I wonder if they are on to my backlinking.... If so, I'm surprised it bounced back up.

Since you've got your site in Webmaster tools, I really would contact Google as someone else suggested. Yeah, I know it is risky but you probably can't hurt yourself in this case. Google already knows your other sites.

What has happened to you is a huge fear of mine since I've only got one site doing well. I need to expand.

I found this post from the Google blog.. hope it will be helpful.

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: More guidance on building high-quality sites

I understand the ads, lets face it, we wouldn't be providing great content if we couldn't make money. 90% of the web would go away.

I think EzineArtilces stopped allowing submissions with their plugin. I have an article that I used with that plugin a couple of years ago. It got me a lot of traffic. The only time I really got much from EZA. I find them more work than the value I get from them. That article ranks number three on Google, the one from EZA. The same article on my blog, almost exact wording ranks number 5. The duplicate content penalty is for duplicate content on the same site. At least that is what most say, Google has said it. Yet the Panda update which attacked content farms went after autoblogs. It isn't making sense to me if duplicate content is only on the same site. You know, I just talked myself into something, duplicate content is no longer about being in the same site only. if that's true, article marketing is in trouble!

I think it is your links. Just as guess but since that may have been what got you the boost it would seem most likely what caused the problem. I use some semi automated methods too. It worries me.

I've seen some evidence that Google favors the rankings of those in their ad networks or affiliate network. Some of those sites seem to rank higher than what seems like they should.

I watched the Matt Curtis videos too, he spoke a lot of ads. I think but I have no proof that Google is favoring longer articles now too. It would make sense, 300 word articles are usually there to sell something. They even mentioned using privacy for domain registration, I turned some of mine off for that reason.

I think I mentioned my site they keep slapping and it keeps bouncing back, it has been slapped again, happened about mid day yesterday. Frustrating as it makes money when it is doing well. Seems some find it of use. Automated backlinks, but I have to submit the links but they tend to grow over time. 2/3 original content 1/3 taken from product specs and an affiliate site but with content. I have not updated it lately. You know in my case that might be it. I did make some small changes to the site and it started doing well again for about a week. It isn't easy to od for an affiliate site with only about 10 products to promote. I'm going to look for a way and see what happens. But the site is also going head to head with some Google favorites. Why does it bounce back and then get smacked again? I think Google's favorites don't like a small timer being able to compete with them. I can't now, the site is dead again.

Ten years ago I did well with affiliate sites and then not so good. Times changed and I didn't. Recently got back into it, think I understand what to do now, no big secret. Focus! I really don't like doing those kinds of sites though. Hard to be creative when it is just to make a buck. At least for me. I'm going to have to work harder on creative. I also need to make more money so I can buy some of those expensive items I review. Catch 22.

Mat Curtis said in one of his videos something like don't do what Suite101 did. I looked at their site, I don't see a lot of ads now. The articles around the net say it was their ads. Maybe they toned it back but when I go to their site, I don't know what their site is about.

I've been very tempted to try an autoblog using an Amazon plugin. One doesn't see as many of those ranking well though and one former autoblog king pronounced it dead.

On the other hand, not long ago there was a post on WF where a guy setup to two sites for affiliate promotion. One hand made and one autoblog. His autoblog did better and he really did't want it to work out that way.

I removed all my ads and sent a reconsideration request to Google. My site does have a lot of ads, but they weren't destracting IMO. I feel like they were well placed.

I thinks you are missing quality of content
? Are you rewriting any other post ?
If yes stop doing that