Will a redirect see a drop in the serps?

[watto]

I have a site here AustralianSmallBusiness. net which ranks fairly well in the serps for certain keywords and is on page 2 in google for my main keywords, however I purchased a new domain name earlier this year and I am thinking about doing a 301 redirect from the old to the new domain.

The problem is that the existing domain name is about 6 years old and the new is about 6 months old.

Will doing a 301 redirect have a negative affect in the serps?

The reason I want to change it is because I believe the .com.au extension would have a better result in the Australian serps then the existing.net extension.

All feedback is greatly appreciated.

watto

[LinksAndTraffic]

Google says if you use a 301 Redirect, then no. But the one time I tried it, my pages disappeared from the SERPs for three months.

[intelinside]

I have recently did 301 redirects on couple of websites and it goes fine. However, I did see the dip in traffic for about a week or so while the update was in progress.