A month ago, we took the plunge and “officially” changed C3’s domain from c-three.org to fightcolorectalcancer.org. The new domain is longer, but it makes much more sense and it doesn’t have a hyphen.

As far as I can tell, I did everything right…301 permanent redirect in the .htaccess file. The new site is listed in DMOZ and Yahoo Directory. Google, MSN and Yahoo are indexing all of the pages.

But our traffic has taken a serious hit and keywords we used to do really well on (colorectal cancer advocacy, for example) we are barely on the map.

We are actively working on the inbound link issue…but it appears that we may be punished by the domain’s youth. I registered fightcolorectalcancer.org in March. We’re not in Google’s sandbox (where Google puts new domains until they build up some trust) but close. That and the change in the way Google does its thing (“Big Daddy”) that lots of folks are complaining about.

I knew this might happen, and from the forums I’ve been following I’m being told to be patient…but it’s tough to see our young site lose ground so quickly. I guess better now than much later…as long as we start moving in the right direction again soon.