I have this site which is doing pretty decent on Google for quite a few competitive keywords ... Now it doesnot seems like the brightest thing to do but I am switching domains ... reason beong this existign domain name is a product specific domain but now the company is adding more products and services which doesnot exactly fall under the exisitng domain name ... so we have got a new domain and moving every thing to the new domain ... I am not sure if I should do 301 or 302 ... I was wondering does 301 from an established domain help the new domain ... PR transfer, sandbox effect ... or initially I shold do 302 till the new domain come out of sand box and then go for 301 ... What do you suggest ?

I would use a 301 redirect.

Remember 301's are for permanent domain moves where as 302's are fore temporary moves.

What you're effectively saying with a 301 to search engine spiders is your page and content has moved to the forwarding page. What was found on your old page can now be found on your new page.

This will give you the best chance of transferring ranking/link popularity etc.

We transferred one of our domains recently. We did a 301 then went through our back links requesting sites to update the links on their pages with our new domain.

Our sites did see a drop for about 6 months but are now back up to speed.

I have heard of people running linking campaigns on holding pages for a couple of months before doing 301's. Not tried it personally but would be interested to hear if anyone else has.

There's also an article on High Rankings suggesting a solution using a 302 redirect until the new domain has achieved good rankings (http://www.highrankings.com/issue142.htm#guest) .

I'm not too sure I agree with the 302 solution as they dont transfer link popularity etc.

One thing I know for sure that the domain is new so I am not goign to have any luck for 6 months + so till that domain kicks in I think its better to have 302 and once I start seeing results in Google have a 301 done then ... if I do have 301 right from th beginning it seems I am goign to definitly loose the rankings ... so why should I start with 301 ...