Changing the domain name on a site with 45,000 pages

Place your bets now....

[dataguy]

I manage a few web sites which have grown in size and popularity over the years. Several of these sites have morphed and evolved into new themes and directions and their domain names no longer accurately reflect their strengths and purposes.

I've wrestled quite a bit with this as some of these sites are directory sites and people are eager to be listed on them because of their reputation for traffic, PageRank, etc. My largest site has the dumbest domain name which uses an incorrect spelling of a common word. It's so common that about 30% of the people who try to link to this site or mention it in their blogs/email/etc.use the wrong spelling. (The owner of the correctly spelled domain name is benefiting from a huge number of unsolicited back links!)

I've decided to change the domain name on a smaller site just to see how it goes. It is also a directory site and it is pretty popular, but it doesn't sell anything so if traffic dips, I won't feel like I've lost much.

I thought you folks here at WebmasterWorld might like to see how my little experiment unfolds so I'll keep this post updated with the latest.

I should point out that these sites have solid internal linking structures and have never suffered from supplemental results. The pages all end in .htm and have no query strings. I use enom's DNS service and by default when you use their system to do a URL redirect, it will do a 301 page to page. If domain name switching should ever go smoothly, it should go smoothly here. If you have any further advice for what I should do, please let me know.

Here are the current stats:

Google reports 26,600 listings for Domain1, 11 for Domain2, none of them are valid except for the root or home page listing.
Google reports 36 links to Domain1, 0 to Domain2.

Yahoo reports 33,800 listings for Domain1, 7 for Domain2, again none of them valid except for the root or home page listing.
Yahoo reports 24,000 links to Domain1 and 1 to Domain2.

MSN reports 2,735 listings for Domain1, 0 for Domain2
MSN reports 1,315 links to Domain1, 2 to Domain2.

I have now set the redirect from Domain1 to Domain2. Place your bets now...

[dataguy]

After 2 weeks time has passed, there's not much to report. Google still shows almost exactly the same number of listings and back links for both domains, despite Domain1 being non-existent for 2 weeks.

Yahoo shows a 40% decline in listings for domain1, and a 80% decline in back links. Domain2 is increasing in indexed pages slightly and back links have gone up, but they are nearly all from Domain1, which of course only exists as 301's to Domain2.

I've been most surprised by MSN. MSN shows a large decrease in listings for Domain1 (about 60%) but they have added 1,500 listings from Domain2 already, as well as a handful of back links. I don't know if this is because MSN is quick to add new pages in general or if they are added new pages faster because of the old pages being 301'ed.