What effect will moving our board have on SEO

[tribedude]

I know some of you must have done this before - moved your board up a level. Generally speaking, if I move my huge board closer to root on our server:

from domain.com/board to domain.com

Are we going to lose all our search engine indexing and are we going to see a huge dip in pageviews for months? Or can Google and the others adapt quickly to such a move?

[dodgeboard.com]

You will take a hit on indexed URL's, but after Google 404's out on 50 or so, it will reindex and eventually it will catch up. As far as time...nobody really knows precisely but I would say within a month.

[Loco.M]

It would depend on your as to how quick it google and the other search engiens will reindex.
The larger the site, the more bots you have on it currently, the quicker they will reindex.
If you do move, be sure to rebuild your sitemap and submit it to google webmaster tools to help speed things along. Also make sure you have all the old pages 301'd to the new ones or at least the new forum root.

[cellarius]

As loco said: 301 redirecting the old pages (use a .htaccess rewrite rule for this) to the new location is the key. This way you won't lose the incoming links, which are important for ranking.