Age of domain transferred with 301 redirect?

[seowoman]

I've read many times that the age of your domain carries some weight with the search engines. My question is, does the age of the domain transfer to the new domain when using a 301 redirect?

Here's some background on the situation. My company's old domain name was chosen poorly and was frequently mispelled by customers. One of the words in the domain was "resource", and people constantly typed "resources" instead. So we decided that we need to rename the company so people would stop confusing us with similarly named competitors. The new domain was launched last June, while the old domain had been around since 1999.

The old domain points to the new domain with a 301 redirect. The new domain is now benefiting from the inbound links acquired under the old domain, which is great. But in terms of the age of the domain, do the search engines recognize the age of old domain and transfer that weight to the new one?

Adrienne (SEO Woman)