Whats happened to my rankings

[easyrider2]

Hey everyone, I hope someone might be able to help me figure out what has gone wrong here.

I have a website which was slowly growing in rankings. The domain used was a .net

However, It is a UK based business so I shifted this to a .co.uk domain and then followed googles advice in webmaster tools for moving address. ie, copy site, verify in GWMT and then 301 the old site.

Now the .net had 71 indexed pages out of 73. But after 2 months .co.uk only has 41 out of 73 indexed.

At the end of last week I did change the theme on my website although the content / urls have all remained the same. I have gone to check my rankings this morning and the site has totally bombed. Even the own brand name does not ranking in top 10 pages.

I have not done an major link building at all yet for the site and any links that are there are all high quality from industry related authority sites.

Looking at GWMT the latest links all look ok, nothing spammy but one thing I did notice is that it shows the .net domain providing 193 links via 301and also individually a great deal of the links that point to .net but have shown in .co.uk

What I would like to know if have I actually done something wrong? Should I just kill the 301 (i am loathed to do this as a few of the links to this took me a long time to get), after spending a great deal of money developing my site and just starting to see some nice progress in the natural rankings and google has gone and pulled the carpet from under me. I would understand if I was doing something wrong but I have made strenuous efforts to ensure the linking on this site is whiter that white.

Oh, I have had no warnings in my messages at all.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[Andropenis_Australia]

Your rankings MAY come back, but it is a big change in googles eyes, even though it's not. The age of your new domain will keep your rankings down, as will the non direct links to your new site.

Google can and most probably will pull the carpet from under you not matter what you do, so your best bet is to NOT rely on google.

I hope your rankings return quickly, but don't get your hopes up.

[Debdulal]

When you are redirecting a website, there will be some kind of loss and gain kinda things. But losing ranking completely is a bit unnerving. However, we need to check your website first, we can provide any feedback.

[easyrider2]

After spending a great deal of time on the webmaster tools forums I have seen that a fair few people have exactly the same type of problem as me. I cant afford to take risks etc with it so just easier to delete the original domain, put in a reconsideration request and start again.