How much do you think domain age matters?

malayan

malayan

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Let's say you had an indexed domain name that's 12 years old, but with no backlinks, and never expired--do you think that's worth building anything on?

Would you take a 12-year-old domain w/ no links over a 1-year-old domain w/ a few hundred backlinks?

How much do you think age matters over links?
 
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i think in case of ranking the domain age matters alot. But age alone will not get you far without backlinks.

But if there are two competing sites with kind of same backlink profile and on page seo i would put my money on the older site to rank higher.
 
Many IM professionals bet on aged domains and the age matters too. Provided the aged domain has some good backlinks and quality content.

In the recent years Google algo has evolved and they now put more emphasis on relevancy. Few years ago it was being said that age shows trust and stability. This should be true in today's times too, if not at all irrelevant.

Hence the aged domain with relevant backlinks and content will be more valued.
 
Domain age is not, never was and never will be a ranking factor. The pure logic of this is nonsense.

Just as dropped/non dropped status of a domain doesn't matter (this is probably even bigger bullshit though).

12 year old domain without backlinks is worth as much as a fresh domain. I does not have any benefits whatsoever.

What does matter is the age of the content itself. As in, how long has it been in index. That's a significant ranking factor. Not a first date of registration.

Why would Google even use this as a factor? Just why, when they can simply check the period of time the site is in index?

"Oh gee, John, did you see that?"
"What?"
"This guy just made a brand new affiliate site on a domain first registered in 1990!"
"How many times has it changed ownership?"
"There's 25 different Whois records and 40 different hosting records"
"That's a bit too much no?"
"No, it's a domain from 1990!!!"
"You are right, let's rank the guy!"
"Yeaaaah!"

Swear, if there was a "Worst SEO" competition, people claiming the aforementioned would rank second, because they are so bad they wouldn't even win it.

Domain.jpg
 
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I actually watched a seminar the other day and the SEO expert was saying there's no such thing as a Sandbox, it's just that Google doesn't see new domains in the same light as aged domains, because the age of the domain helps build the authority and as such these older domains don't have the 'sandbox issues' that brand new domains have, because a brand new domain has nor authority or trust established.

I spat my coffee out at this and almost choked laughing.
 
MisterF said:
I actually watched a seminar the other day and the SEO expert was saying there's no such thing as a Sandbox, it's just that Google doesn't see new domains in the same light as aged domains, because the age of the domain helps build the authority and as such these older domains don't have the 'sandbox issues' that brand new domains have, because a brand new domain has nor authority or trust established.

I spat my coffee out at this and almost choked laughing.
Click to expand...

Issue with these "SEO experts" is, that they have high enough budget to go to auctions and buy a sizeable domain that has a nice backlink profile and long history. And they rank easily.

Problem is, that they attribute that rank to age, rather than the backlink profile, which is of course, idiotic.

However, when inexperienced kids come online and see this shit being spewed all over, they start looking for domains and buy whatever their budget allows.

Which is basically fuckall. Then you have kids working on sites with nonexistent backlink profile, but a "nice domain age", expecting a rank, which will not happen.

And thus they waste their money, their time and then IM doesn't work, expired domains don't work, yada yada.

Also, here are a few domains (available) first registered in 1997! Ohmygod! That I just randomly filtered out now. Enjoy the non rank.

alasoft.net
americanwarehouse.net
caladmin.net
cam-enterprises.net
comedy-contests.net
computerdiscount.net
discountcomputer.net
discountstockbrokers.net
discountsusa.net
esoftsolutions.net
eurointer.net
ewebvs.net
giftwarenews.net
gulfindustries.net
hollywoodchat.net
ingenioren.net
onlinediscounters.net
oregonsbest.net
prep-gov.net
profit-line.net
roadwhore.net
saar-medien.net
saudiindustries.net
sppco.net
studentdiscounters.net
supertote.net
viacucina.net
voyagesplus.net
vught.net
 
Age of the domain has nothing to with overall ranking
Helps to mitigate sandbox effect in some cases but never really a ranking factor
 
Used to think it was a ranking factor. Now no longer after a few failed experiments.
 
Jerk55 said:
Used to think it was a ranking factor. Now no longer after a few failed experiments.
Click to expand...
I like this. Instead of speculating, we should experiment and see if it ACTUALLY makes any difference, stop listening to those SEO gurus like they just found the holy grail of SEO (they won't share it with you at least, lol).
From my experience domain age only matters up to 10% in the 1st 3-6 months of your website being live and as time passes and your website starts getting clicks and Google knows your CTR and bounce rate + backlinks, signals, and so on, the importance of your domain age goes to like 1%, so IMO it does matter, especially if you're not building backlinks.
The key point is that Google will care way more about your CTR and bounce rate + backlinks than your domain age.
 
So here's something that will help answer this question.

Site 1 - Domain registered in 1998 DR 48, RD 800. Was not indexed when I bought it. Experienced sandbox.
Site 2 - Also registered in 1998 DR40, RD 800. Was not indexed when I bought it. I restored the domain but didn't work on the site for 10 months. When I started adding content, the sandbox period was still there but articles started ranking a bit quicker than domain 1. There was still a time period where google took a bit to rank my content, it was shorter than domain 1 but not by a significant margin.

Competition for both was similar. I think Google just takes a bit to see what your content is about. If your site has a lot of content in a certain niche and if you add more within the same vertical then it ranks quicker but still takes time. The actual article age is what matters IMO. Sometimes, if the competition is really low, you're going to rank first page right away. Also if you have laser topical relevancy (e.g. laptops) and you add something about laptops then it will rank faster.

Be fucking patient.

 
There is a reason people look for expired domain. Not just aged domain. Cause more than age it's backlink and relevancy to your nich that matter most
 
People trust the domain age because the domain has more backlinks, more metrics, and Referring links so build the website now and rock it mate.

Domain age is just a considerable factor for the website as a trustable site to place articles, get links and other promotions
 
Nargil said:
Issue with these "SEO experts" is, that they have high enough budget to go to auctions and buy a sizeable domain that has a nice backlink profile and long history. And they rank easily.

Problem is, that they attribute that rank to age, rather than the backlink profile, which is of course, idiotic.

However, when inexperienced kids come online and see this shit being spewed all over, they start looking for domains and buy whatever their budget allows.

Which is basically fuckall. Then you have kids working on sites with nonexistent backlink profile, but a "nice domain age", expecting a rank, which will not happen.

And thus they waste their money, their time and then IM doesn't work, expired domains don't work, yada yada.

Also, here are a few domains (available) first registered in 1997! Ohmygod! That I just randomly filtered out now. Enjoy the non rank.

alasoft.net
americanwarehouse.net
caladmin.net
cam-enterprises.net
comedy-contests.net
computerdiscount.net
discountcomputer.net
discountstockbrokers.net
discountsusa.net
esoftsolutions.net
eurointer.net
ewebvs.net
giftwarenews.net
gulfindustries.net
hollywoodchat.net
ingenioren.net
onlinediscounters.net
oregonsbest.net
prep-gov.net
profit-line.net
roadwhore.net
saar-medien.net
saudiindustries.net
sppco.net
studentdiscounters.net
supertote.net
viacucina.net
voyagesplus.net
vught.net
Click to expand...
Agree!
 
malayan said:
Let's say you had an indexed domain name that's 12 years old, but with no backlinks, and never expired--do you think that's worth building anything on?

Would you take a 12-year-old domain w/ no links over a 1-year-old domain w/ a few hundred backlinks?

How much do you think age matters over links?
Click to expand...

1 year old domain with few hundred backlinks wins in this case, every single time and twice on sundays!

age of the content matters, not age of domain.
 
I've never seen anything credibly support domain age as a ranking factor, outside of the sandbox, that ruled out a superior backlink profile as the actual reason an old domain ranks well.

If domain age alone supported ranking in any meaningful way, then you would kill everybody with a bunch of geocities and angelfire web 2.0s because those domains go all the way back to the 1990s.
 
It seems to me that if you have an old domain, but it has no history of Google ranking and backlinks, it is of no use.

I would prefer it to a domain that is 1 year old, but had some position or pages in search, as well as some backlinks.
 
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