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Thanks Josh,

I appreciate the insight. I have researched other possibilities such as low quality links, high number of inbound links across the same domain, etc... but those competing for the same search phrases seem to be equal or worse offenders and are unaffected.

The primary difference apparent thus far is the less than SEO optimal domain usage.

But I'll keep digging and live with the .co for now as it sounds like the first domain change was one too many.

Cheers,
-Ross

Several years ago my firm migrated our domain from a very lengthy 3point7designs.com to 3.7designs.co (we couldn't get 7designs.com at the time) thinking this would be a clever way to brand the name 3.7 Designs.

Ever since that change we've had a dramatic reduction in search rankings which has lasted years.

https://monosnap.com/file/adJUdkX9YCXQaODcXype4qza70pMCE

You can see the drop in early 2011, we made the switch in February.

I've read some discussion about Google changing weights based on having numbers in the subdomain as it appears spammy. I've also herd speculation about .co vs .com.

Further evidence is being outranked by a competitor for a term we previously dominated despite having higher domain authority, inbound links, exact match keyword in our title and content.

We now own 37designs.com and 7designs.com and are contemplating a switch.

Any insight into these being ranking factors or is the site being penalized for other reasons?