Do Older Domains Rank Higher Than Newer Domains?

Common Sense

According to “common sense,” an older domain will most certainly be worth more than a newly registered one. This is why there are so many articles like this one explaining how to assess an expired domain and determine its worth for personal use.

Better Domain Age Ranking

Naturally, practically all of these articles point you in the direction of using the blog for a Private Blog Network. Google devalues PBNs and the websites that utilise them in the past because it finds them to be undesirable. Purchase of the domain and usage of a 301 redirect to send any existing connections and traffic to your site are common examples of alternative applications.

However, this only works if the older domain satisfies two requirements. First, a website that didn’t stink had to already be hosted on the earlier domain. If the former site was bad, it most likely didn’t gain much or any value. Links it may have had are probably not very valuable SEO service.

Additionally, the previous domain must have recently expired. Less likely a domain is to have retained any value the longer it has been dormant, whether as a parked page or even a 404. A domain that hasn’t been used since 2001 may as well be brand-new if you purchase it.

How Does Google Calculate Domain Age?

Let me ask you a question: What factors towards a domain’s age? Any domain may be entered into a tool like the Wayback Machine. I’ve personally seen domains that I first believed to be empty turn out to contain two distinct websites since the 1990s, both of which were legitimate, non-spam websites. Does the fact that the domain was first registered in 1992 give any value to a new website on that domain? Not really, no.

You can check a domain’s WhoIs information, but there are several problems with doing so. Information may be erroneous or concealed. Even if the site is the same, the date may display as the new registration date if someone forgets to renew their domain for a week or a month before re-registering it. The information is therefore inconsistent across many registrants and nations, making it hard to utilise as a credible resource.

How Does Google Calculate Domain Age?

Google really bases its decision on a mix of two factors: when did they first record crawling the site and when did they first discover a connection to it? For those who don’t know to submit a sitemap for a new website, Google can only locate it by locating a link that refers to it; often, they will be the same date. Because of this, having a new site indexed might take a while.

What Effect Does Domain Age Have?

Because it is a benefit that smaller, younger sites won’t be able to overcome, domain age cannot be employed as a significant ranking factor, as I explained before. It would be comparable to having staggered starting lines for a straight race in a footrace. Those that start later must run a greater distance.

If you disagree with my reasoning, you may speak with Matt Cutts, the “face of Google,” personally. He specifically discusses this problem in one previous video. He claims that there is not much of a difference between a site that is six months old and one that is a year old.

Matt Cutts and Domain Age

Why should a site that I secretly created and didn’t link to for a whole year have greater intrinsic worth than a copy-and-paste replica of that site that was uploaded to a hosting service today? Of course, difficulties with copied material should be ignored for the sake of this thought exercise.

Really, the first two or three months of a site’s existence are when domain age is most important. Imagine it as a kind of charge metre or power bar that you fill up from zero when you register the site to 100 after it has been operating for a few months. As long as you maintain the site developing, updating it, and adding new material, the payment remains at $100. Over the course of a few months or a year or two, if you leave the site unattended, that “charge” will be used up. You must put some effort into restoring an outdated site since you can’t simply pick it up and start using it.

Of course, you are under no obligation to believe Matt Cutts or anything Google says if you don’t want to. Because Matt states “I wouldn’t worry about it” rather than stating that domain age is not a ranking factor, the people at Dagmar Marketing claim that domain age IS a ranking component.

Here’s how I see it. Although domain age is a consideration in my opinion, it is so insignificant as to be irrelevant after a few months of operation. The minimum amount of care you need take is to register your domain as soon as you have a vision for it and to set up a page that says “under development” or “coming soon.” If you have more sophisticated features to come, like a shop or a custom design, this page may even be kept up to date with the launch of a blog. It’s OK to start a tiny blog and eventually turn it into a complete website.

One of those criteria is domain age, which, if it matters at all, has such a little impact that you wouldn’t be able to identify the difference unless a very particular circumstance existed. The older site would probably rank higher if you had two identical sites, one with a month-old domain and the other with a year-old domain.

Maybe it wouldn’t, however. Freshness of the content has a significant influence. A site that is a month younger and has more recent material would rank higher than one that is a year older but only has a month’s worth of content. The age cannot take precedence over other criteria.

Some Minor History

Domain age used to matter more in the early 2000s, which is presumably why Google applied for their patent and why it does so in the first two to three months of a site’s life cycle. Domain Tasting is the cause, in this case.

When you attend a wine tasting or similar event, your goal is to sample a wide range of wines, preferably so you may pick one you enjoy and purchase a bottle to take home. Similar to a taste of domain.

The Add Grace Period, or AGP, allowed users to return domains they had bought with a full refund if they changed their minds about them during the first week. Webmasters would take advantage of this by compiling lists of hundreds of possible domain names. They would develop a simple template website and a lengthy list of the data they required. They would “purchase” a domain, launch the website, and do extensive research to determine the domain’s viability. They would calculate the fundamental search engine value, examine any lingering value from an expired domain, and so on.

Domain Lifecycle Registration

Then, prior to the AGP expiring, they would decide. If the website was worthwhile, they would maintain it and create a new website around it. If it wasn’t, they would try to locate a better beginning place but would only invest time before returning the name for a refund.

To solve this issue, two things came together. One was Google, which made domain age matter more in the initial few weeks and months of site ownership by filing the patent I stated in 2005. Because their site was so young, the domain tasters wouldn’t be able to learn anything about search engine rankings. The second was the implementation of transaction fees and other measures by ICANN to make domain name refunds less appealing. Of course, people still do it, but it is more costly and less practical now.

Why You Should Use an Older Domain

Even after all of this, there are still a few strong reasons to search for an older domain rather than starting from scratch.

Older domains are probably easier for humans to read. There is something of a username issue at play in this situation. Most likely, your ideal usernames have already been used if you attempt to use a site like AIM or even Twitter these days. The most popular words and letters, as well as many of those with the numbers 2 or xx before and after them, have already been taken. Being WeedLord422 on Twitter would be humiliating for you.

Branded Domains HugeDomains Examples

Nowadays, a lot of domain names are already registered even if they have no useful content. In order to locate anything you can utilise for your brand, you have to work around what has been claimed since you can’t always simply purchase a domain.

TLDs don’t force older doains to make compromises. A solution to the domain/username issue is to use a different TLD to get around a name that is already in use. If you desire anything that already has a.com, you may register it as a.site,.net,.org, or one of the more recent TLDs.

Today, far too many individuals think that “the internet” as a whole is a.com domain. Push a.net website and you’ll see an astonishingly high volume of users attempting to access If they have another means to get in touch with you and it doesn’t work, they’ll let you know that your website is down.

Of course, the.com domain has inherent worth as well. It has far higher basic value since so many people think of it as the default, therefore getting one is always preferable. You can locate the.com lot easier if you discover an expired domain that you wish to purchase than if you’re attempting to register a fresh one from start.

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