Demi,

You will not start from even close to zero if you do the 301's correctly. You need to do a couple of things: The redirects are url to url from old domain to new. Since you are changing the domain name, I recommend also putting in a change of address with GWMT. This will last for 180 days and will insure you have been indexed a few times prior to it going off.

From a lot of experience with 301's, if you do it correctly you should not lose more than a percent or so of link juice, especially given the current age of your site. I suggest running a link profile in something like ahrefs and then after you do the change, running regular ones for the new site so you can watch the progress. That way you will learn what happens with redirects first hand.

Hope this helps,

Robert

Excellent points by EGOL.

Amazon, and Walmart, are two edged swords that cut one way (you). I understand why businesses go that route, but it is very difficult to win. Sometimes someone does though:

A lady who is a friend of mine about 15 years ago took over the US arm of a German toy distributor and they created a very cool doll. Everyone with the German company and all on the US marketing team screamed they had to take it to Walmart. She politely refused to and said, let Walmart come to me. She then went all over hawking the doll and ended up on HSN. (I think that is the original big TV sales channel). About a year in everyone wanted these dolls and Walmart did not have them.

When Walmart called, she named the price - she did not have to kiss someone's... They were pleased to do the kissing.

One of my favorite stories of all time.

Serkie

Given these are product descriptions, but apply only to you selling them (even if it is through Amazon/G) I think there are a couple of ways you can go. One would be to add author markup if that is possible; I don't know how many products, etc. you are dealing with or what type of eCommerce or other platform you may be using.

Secondarily, within your actual text, you could state authorship and place a link back to you.(likely at very end of description.)

Last would be that if you register a copyright (no not a circle with a c in it as most do - the real thing) it can be fairly inexpensive. Depending how you package it to the copyright office we find it can run about a dollar a page. That would give you ownership should you ever have an issue with someone using your description without authorization (obviously you give it to Amazon and Google.)

A final note is this: when you started rewriting the descriptions my guess is you wrote, changed, rewrote, etc. In the event you ever had to defend yourself or prove you are the actual owner, in a court the documents showing how you arrived at the final are invaluable.

I don't know if this is what you were looking for, but I hope something here will help.

Best

Matt,

First thing, is you said this started on 7/12. Was there anything done with GA code placement then or prior (say within the previous month)?  And, do you have a bounce rate that is at or near zero?

Second, Can you give me any of the KW terms that are showing for you (don't need other data on that).

Next, can you take visitor flow for a week, and then juxtapose it against what you are showing re KW terms and urls to see if you have any "ahaa" moment.

From experience I can tell you that if you have GA code in more than once it will affect things but I do not recall ever seeing this type of occurrence. You are obviously in the right area on GA so you should see KWs with amounts to the right. (I am assuming your GA code is in the head tag).

Also, other than GA, are you running any other type of analytics program?

Now, if you take where you are and select secondary dimension, then select traffic sources and then landing page. 
Does this change your urls on the left to keywords and the next item to the right being the url?

I am going to send an email to a person who only does high end analysis and is G certified in GA. With all the redaction there is really no info, but I will ask him generally if he has seen that occur before. Let me know on the above as I do not know when he will respond this close to the weekend.

Let me know. Thanks

Josh, 
I use GA a lot and have not experienced that. If you can either put an image (use something where you can show everything like awesome screenshot) here or if it is better, PM me, I will look at it to see what is happening. If I don't have an answer, I will shoot an email to an expert (whose only works is GA and other analytics) with the screen shot.

Thanks

Josh,

Under Traffic Sources - Search - Organic, You are saying your primary dimension is Keyword, and under that first column, there are urls as opposed to keywords? 
It is not under a secondary dimension, correct?

Just clarifying before going further.