It is widely believed that your domain age can have a bearing on the success of your website in the Search Engines, and in particular with Google.

The two main factors that are taken into consideration when determining your domain age are:

1. When your domain was first registered.
2. How long into the future your domain is registered for.

There is some evidence to suggest that the longer a domain is registered for, the better it is for Search Engine rankings. Google and other Search Engines like to see domains that have been registered for extended periods of time, and also ones that are registered for a long period into the future, as this shows a commitment to the domain name. It is also an indicator that the website is not a temporary spam site. Most experts agree that you should register your domain for a long time, because search engines factor domain "stability" when looking at your pages.

A Google Patent Registered in 2005 had this recorded:

[0099] Certain signals may be used to distinguish between illegitimate and legitimate domains. For example, domains can be renewed up to a period of 10 years. Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain and, thus, the documents associated therewith.

All of this might seem irrelevant if you have a brand new domain name and website and your intentions are to be ‘legitimate’ and around for years, right? Wrong! Google has a system which is often referred to as the ‘Sandbox Effect’ in which brand new websites often don’t appear in its Search Results for a period of time – either because the domain and website are brand new and/or the website is not considered popular due to a lack of inward links. It is a kind of probation period that allows Google to figure out which sites are committed to staying online and those which aren’t. In doing so, this assists them in providing only the most relevant quality sites to their searchers.

So what should you do when you are looking to purchase a domain name?

1. Register your domain for as long into the future as is practicable. This will indicate to the Search Engines that you intend for your site to stick around for a long time.

2. Consider purchasing domain names which have been pre-owned, this will go some way in assisting your site to avoid the Sandbox Effect as mentioned above. Note: make sure that these pre-owned domain names have been associated with credible and relevant websites prior to purchase.

3. If you aren’t fully decided on which domain name is best for your website or are not ready to launch your website yet, register a couple which can then be pointed or redirected to your main domain at a later date. That way you can allow your domain name to age whilst you make a decision, and therefore give yourself a slight head start. Note: it is thought that Google also considers how long a domain name has been associated with a website so this last method should not be relied upon as a foolproof way of gaining rankings.

It is important to understand that the age of your domain is only one of over 200 algorithms that Google applies to a website and as such, it should be taken into consideration in the overall Search Marketing picture and not in isolation.

Categories: Search

Thanks for your comment Sufian, We still hold firm in our belief that Domain Age and the Length of Time that a domain is registered for are relatively important. Our closing sentence states this “It is important to understand that the age of your domain is only one of over 200 algorithms that Google applies to a website and as such, it should be taken into consideration in the overall Search Marketing picture and not in isolation.” Great content plus relevant and quality inward links are currently the most important factors but our approach is always an holistic one and we believe that any signals from Google should be taken into consideration.

>The two main factors that are taken into consideration when determining your domain >age are: > >1. When your domain was first registered. >2. How long into the future your domain is registered for. Very good post! I don’t disagree with most of what you said above. But… If you are talking about these factors in terms of SEO, then I must say both are useless. For a search engine such as Google, the domain age is counted from the date when the site is first crawled and indexed. Not when the domain was first regged. It is not the age of the domain but the age of the site that matters a lot in today’s organic search specially Google. The second factor that you discussed here has a very trivial weight in influencing rankings for most search engines out there. IMO, the most important factor regarding domain age for SEO is the site age (when the site was first crawed and indexed) not the domain age(when the domain was first regged). What’s your take now?