In my recent experience redirecting a 3 year old website it took about a week for Google to index and list the new domain. A week or two after the new domain was indexed and the two domains existed in the serps about a page or half page from each other with the older domain ranked higher. Eventually the newer one climbed and the older one dropped, although I think it's still listed. Overall I was very happy with how redirecting the website turned out and wouldn't say it is bad thing to do. Obviously you don't want to do it for the sake of it but if you need to do it for identity reasons don't worry about it too much, just make sure to use 301 redirects as Paul said. You should also consider updating any links pointing to the old domain too as well as the redirect, it might help boost the new domain quicker. |