Affects of changing domain name for website

What is the latest advice to change acronym to a name

[tigerholm]

Is it safe to change a url?

I know this has come up before, but I understand that search engines have been changing how they handle URL changes. What is the latest advice?

Is it a good idea to change from an acronym such as www. bwc.com to www.bluewidgets.com?

If search engines show that www.bwc.com has 10,000 pages indexed for that url, what happens when there to those indexed pages if the url changes?

If search engines show 30,000 backlinks to www.bwc.com , what happens when there are 500 backlinks to www.bluewidegts.com?

Will a 301 redirect for www.bwc.com to www.bluewidgets.com keep the 10,000 peages in the index and credit the 30,000 backlinks to www.bwc.com and also the new 500 backlinks to www.bluewidgets.com?

[tedster]

There's no "safe" way to launch a new domain and have Google transfer the rankings of a previous domain name. A new domain is, well, new. It starts out as an umknown quantity. Even with the exact same structure and using 301 redirects from the old domain to the new, there is usually a big old bump in the road.

This forum is full of recent discussions about the frustration of trying to do just this. In fact, at PubCon this week, I suggested to Matt Cutts that Google create a "Certified Domain Change" program -- and he liked the idea. So I'm hopeful for the future, but for the moment I would say only change domain name if some over-riding business change makes it a necessity. And then plan for a big, extended dip in traffic.

Will a 301 redirect for www.bwc.com to www.bluewidgets.com keep the 10,000 peages in the index and credit the 30,000 backlinks to www.bwc.com and also the new 500 backlinks to www.bluewidgets.com?

No, it absolutely will not. Each of the pages on the new domain name (each of the new, full urls) would need to be spidered and vetted. If it was an automatic transfer, the opportunities for gaming Google would be immense.