I've just registered a domain in the last couple months. Discovered that it has a Wayback archive going back to 2006. Wondering if that will factor into how Google calculates the URL's age. I imagine they go by the age since the new registration, but maybe I'll get lucky.
I am not sure if Google can access Whois data to determine the registration date and the related information. Reason, most of this data can be made anonymous. Having said that I am not sure on this part either but it is more likely that it would consider the first cached date as the point of reference.
From the WHOIS records. The registration/expiration date is visible to everyone and they can't be hidden.
BUT does it use the past information if this is a totally new site , and new owner - and just by chance bought a domain that was once in use?
I am not sure of the method of calculation, and am not sure if it is known to anyone. However, I have read comments on DP many times where people advise others to 'buy an old domain' rather than a new one. Maybe the theory is that there *could* be some benefit for age or PageRank.
I recall reading that Google does check the WHOIS database to see how old a domain is and, especially, how long the present owner had had the domain name. I have a website I registered and started in 1996. Same domain name registration the entire time. I can't go wrong with Google with this website, most any search phrase related to the domain name gets indexed in the top five results.
Personally I don't think it would help to have previous wayback cache. In one of Google's latest patents they mentioned the possibility of removing benefits of an aged domain when it's content changes drastically. I don't know if this would just be based on content or if whois information would be considered. This may or may not be part of the current algorithm, but it would make sense for Google to do something like this, especially with so many seo's trying to gain an advantage by buying old domains. I think something like this may have helped a lot more a year or two ago.
Vansterdam makes a great point here. If it were able to be manipulated to an extreme, then people (spammers) would purchase old domains hoping to keep the positive attributes, and then creating a completely different site for their own personal gain. I think it would be a good rule, if it isn't already one, to re-age the domain based on previous cached content and current content. If the new site doesn't have the same or a similar purpose as the old one, then the age starts over with the new purchase. Food for thought...
My guess is that it has maintained records ever since it has existed, kind of like being it's own hidden archive.org.
Well, given that the domain was about the exact same topic that I'm writing now, I guess I'm in a better boat. The URL SEOWordsmith.com could only really be about SEO. Unfortunately, there's only one major backlink I can find to the old seowordsmith. It's two years old, though, so that's good. Another question: I read somewhere that the age of backlinks is also figured in. If this is the case: couldn't you just backdate a blog post to two years earlier, linking to the site, making the URL appear older? Seems like a black hat tactic that Google's probably figured out.
You couldn't trick the search engines by changing the date on a blogpost. Google does not rely on websites to tell them how old a link is. They keep track of this themselves by taking note of the date when the link was first discovered by the Google spider.
There was fairly recent interview with Matt Cutts (can't remember where though) in which he played down the significance of the age of the domain name. To me though it makes sense that the domain name age is one of the most significant factors in the Google algorithm (and age of incoming links) as they would be good way of factoring whether a site is spam or not.
I don't know method to calculate the age of URL, I think Google maintain the records, how old a domain is and, especially, how long the present owner had the domain name.
The domain age is easy to explain: It's simply the time it was registered without getting dropped/expired, regardless of owner changes, IP changes or whatever. So, if a domain was registered from 1998 till now, without interruptions, it's 10 years old for google. If a domain was registered in 1998, expired in 2007, was re-registered in 2007, it's only 1 year old for google, no matter what archive.org entries may exisist or not. Aged domains definitely have an advantage, especially if the topic of the content always stayed the same, it's pretty much like a little built in trust, but it's very limited if the owner and content changed, so don't expect wonders when buying an aged domain and have a really close look if it ever expired. There are people specialized in registering domains with a nice archive.org history that were recently dropped, they claim they're aged and valuable, but in reality it's just a few days or weeks old from google's point of view.
Google really does seem to look for 'authority' sites. Ones that have credibility whether it has quality links, in good neighbourhoods etc. I think the age of a site and whether it has been around for a while is just another way is can authenticate a site's content and worthiness.
if domain is dropped and again registered then the age of domain or URL will be counted from the date of new registered. So the archived date or time will not have any count for your domain.
I have seen that same thing everyday here on DP, but however it would make more sense to buy an established/old site rather then a domain (undeveloped). As the pages/posts do gain more trust as they age...i.e. as the URL ages (starting date is the first time the search engine bot crawls that specific URL).
It would be cheaper though to re-register an expired domain that has a lot of backlinks - if it doesn't conflict with the site's theme - rather than buy an expensive aged domain.