Domain Name Advice

[USCountytrader]

Hello,
Looking for some advice. I have had a website online since 1/2003. In 6/2006 I took a chance and changed my domain name from a 14 letter, 4 syllable .com to a 9 letter, 2 syllable .org “couldn’t get .com” purely for fact of being able to remember the name. Since then my adsense revenue has been 1/10th of what it was. I had also taken the old .com offline.

.com was registered in 1/2003 “old name” and was active for 3 ˝ years
.org was registered in 6/2006 “new name” and has been active for a little over a year.

One note, when I changed domain names I restructured and broke the site into 50 sub-domains. The site is related to the 50 states, so it only made sense seeing it had almost 30,000 urls.

Recently I brought the old .com back online with just a under construction page just outta curiosity, and found that the old .com has the same rankings as my new .org.

Looking back on it, I probably should not have changed the name even though the domain name was long and hard to remember. Would it be wise to change it back to the old domain even though it’s been offline for a year and the structure changed? I heard older domains rank better. Or just ride it out with the new one? How would a change like this play out in google?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Quadrille]

There's plenty of threads on this topic, and they pretty much all advise not to change domain names.

Only you can be sure, however, that changing back will be a better option.

Did you 301 from the old to the new? Did you re-structure at the same time?

Also, from a SE POV, you've now got 50 domains, not one. In many cases, domain.com/state/ x50 is a much better option than state.domain.com x50 - it divides your marketing need by 50, and multiplies the incoming link power by a similar factor.

In way over 90% of cases, changing domain names is not justified - and going from a .com to .org is usually a bad move (unless you are 301ing from the .com to the .org). point is, whoever has the .com has serious advantages.

But you have made the change; one argument says that changing back could do more damage, after a year; balance that against the advantages of a .com and moving from 50 domains to one.

Or you could decide in for a penny, in for a pound - and find a new .com!

A lot to think about, and worth exploring other threads.

Good Luck! ;)