How does web-forwarding work? According to Gandi, my search engine ranking right now is going to be terrible.

There are 3 types of web forwarding:

Direct(Permanent) – (forwarded domain name is visible) – Good search-engine ranking
Direct(Temporary) – (same story) – Bad search-engine ranking
Masked – (hides the url that’s being reached) – Very poor search-engine ranking

However, I think for now a very poor search-engine ranking is more of a blessing.