Site Age Factor - Changing Domain Names

[USCountytrader]

Hello,
After running my large website "200,000 pages + of oringinal content" for many years, I decided about 2 months ago to take a chance and change my domain name from a 14 char domain name to a much easier to remember 9 char domain name.

old domain name - created March 2001
new domain name - created Aug 2006

When I switched over to the new domain name I decided to restructure and redesign the entire website "much better for the user then before". When I relaunched it, I deleted all my pages in the old domain except a custom 404 page that would give a 404 then redirect any page that was requested other then the home page because the link structure is different now, and the home page of old domain does a 301 to the new domain.

Old domain is on my old host, new domain is on a new host. So they have different IP's. My question is, doing it the way I did it, will I still be sandboxed? or will any of the domain age of old domain transfer at all? I know its gonna be a rough ride for awhile, just how long is the question?

Another Question, Google & Ask Jeeves crawlers are hammering me! 43 gigabytes of bandwitdh just for these 2 crawlers in the last 2 weeks. Yet I have like 100 pages in Ask Jeeves & 3300 pages in Google. Is it normal for crawlers to cost you so much and not give squat in return?

[Quadrille]

You almost certainly will suffer many of the problems of new sites.

When changing domains (never do it!), the 301 is correct, but to get the best benefit from that, you need to move the site pretty well as is; avoiding major changes.

The 301 should be domain to domain - redirecting every page to it's new equivalent page.

If you severely restructure, then 301 or no 301, it's a new site - new folders, new URLs, nothing to keep the continuity.

You need to concentrate on adding and developing content, while also updating your links.

[edited by: Quadrille at 9:11 pm (utc) on Oct. 18, 2006]