By: EGOL
Moving from Domain A to Domain B
Search Engines
The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
I recently posted a question and poll over at SEOChat.com about moving a website from Domain A to Domain B. I wanted to hear some first-hand reports of what would happen - my fear was that the site would drop into the sandbox. Several members, including Randfish, posted detailed accounts about what happened to their site when making a similar move. Some went into the sandbox and others suffered significant ranking drops. A few members were willing to bet one-month's pay that a moved site would drop into the box. You can see the thread and add your experience at https://forums.seochat.com/t52600/s.html
Mike - There are more than a few examples pointed to in the linked thread at SEOChat. It's worth visiting. One notorious example is SEOmoz itself which has been "boxed" since being 301'd from socengine.com/seo (it's former location) in March.
Once again, what I am missing here just like with many discussions is the complete lack of examples. Show me and I believe you. Either those discussing the issues don't want to or can't give them.
I would not do such a thing unless I really had to. If I had to move the content then I would move the content first, and get fresh links to the content. I would also add as much fresh content as possible to domain B. I would keep thw dublicate content on domain A until domain B leaves the (allegded) sandbox. At that time and not before I would set up permanent redirects (HTTP 301) from domain A to domain B (mapping the new location of the content). Keep in mind that there is no such thing a a duplicate penalty, it is a filter.