[Update, 10 a.m.: Shortly after we published this post, the Seattle P-I's site announced that Hearst has, in fact, decided to launch an online-only publication, with the last print edition of the P-I scheduled for Tuesday. More to come.]

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's web site last night was quietly shifted away from the "nwsource.com" domain it shared with The Seattle Times -- apparently setting the stage for the P-I's transition to online-only publication.

Although the P-I has long used the "seattlepi.com" brand, traffic to the site was redirected in the past to the domain "seattlepi.nwsource.com," a reference to the NWSource online property that bridged Seattle's daily newspapers.

Starting Sunday night, the P-I's site temporarily redirected visitors to the emergency domain "disaster.nwsource.seattlepi.com," a stripped-down page used when the site is experiencing technical difficulties. When the full site came back online, it was using the pure "seattlepi.com" domain. The redirection now works in the reverse, with traffic to seattlepi.nwsource.com going to seattlepi.com.

The domain for P-I staff and reader blogs also shifted away from nwsource.com. However, NWSource appears to still be serving ads on seattlepi.com, and the P-I site still contains links to nwsource.com.

Hearst Corp., the P-I's owner, put the paper up for sale in January and announced that it would close the P-I or take it purely online if it couldn't find a buyer. The company recently made offers to some existing staffers to work for an online-only P-I. Hearst is expected to announce its plans for the paper this week. Most of the paper's employees are expected to lose their jobs.

The separately owned Seattle Times and Seattle P-I have operated since 1983 under a joint operating agreement -- with the Seattle Times Co. handling advertising, circulation and other business functions for both newspapers, even as they maintained competing newsrooms.

The shift away from NWSource -- and the temporary use of the "disaster" domain -- generated lots of chatter on Twitter overnight. Also see coverage by Eli Sanders of the Stranger's Slog blog. We've sent a message to Hearst spokesman Paul Luthringer seeking comment on the domain shift, and we'll update this post depending on the response.