How much relevance is given to it? Say I bought a 7 yr old domain but its never really been used for anything is it really worth paying the extra $$$ for it, would it make a good difference?
if it have beed indexed for 7 years (with no breaks) than it's wort spending extra money. Check your domain at http://archive.org
I'm a beleiver. Also, I think length of domain registration is important too. Some peolple think I'm nuts, but I do well with my older domains.
It used to be worth it but Google reset the domain age recently to prevent exactly this type of stuff. http://www.seobuzzbox.com/google-resets-expired-domains/ I actually started a thread on this 12 days ago:http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=660621&highlight=google+domain but didn't get any replies so I guess no one knows for certain.
This is the key to getting ranked. 1. It needs to be old. Check here http://whois.domaintools.com/ 2. It needs to have been indexed the whole time. If it is parked it is useless. Called dropped I think but correct me if wrong. 3. It needs to be niched. If you are selling airline tickets..... don't by a niched domain on plants... or that is what you will be....If the niche has chnaged walk away 4. It needs a few links that are of the niche above In practice it it is easier to buy a website. and sometimes cheaper The name reset is true. I have a cupbard full of useless ones. You need to buy it before it expires etc. It is worthless to SEO if it does. Depends what you are selling. If you make $5 dollars a sale, the budget will be tight, If you make $4000 dollars a sale, price is irrelevant. Example of how well this works. I bought domain abcd.co.uk 4 years old, very similar to a blue chip that I was selling stuff for, and they seemed cool about trademarks etc. The site ranked well ~2 to them literally within 12 weeks for quite a competitive term. I no longer have the domain . Ahem...
That's only if the domain expires, and you change themes. If you buy the domain name from the current owner, and keep the same theme, chances are good that you will retain some of the domain's value.
lol, I have bought a domain here ( the blog in my signature) the second I post a new article, I am indexed. Google trusts older domains Just my 2 cents.
I've been under the impression that when the registrant info changes the domain age is reset and you are put in a temporary probation period - though I haven't actually seen this in practice, fwiw.
I have a friend who rarely knows about SEO. We have same information/content (not identical) on our pages. His domain name is 2yrs, and mine is 6months old. He ranks really well with a lot of keywords without even trying. I'm now beating him in rankings...but he's always right behind me. I used backlinks, articles, blog, etc...and he hardly does any of the above. (He doesn't know how) I believe it has to do with the domain age.
It is not useless. You should create few pages and run the website so that google will give the rank to it.
Not true at all, think about it do you honestly believe if i bought DigitalPoint i'd loose all rankings and be put on "probation" when i updated the domain with my details? If this was true the developed website sales market would basically collapse.
Yes! Not due to Google but with both out luck at the moment! They don't reset. If they go there sedo type places they are reset. You need to buy them while they are live. They need to keep the same niche and context. Nothing more too it really.
The registrar change does not have an effect sites are bought and sold , remember , remember youtube bought by google
The domain will be worth more if the new site has the same theme, that you can update the whois is such a way that the site doesn't loose the age, and the backlinks don't change. I just sold a domain for $600 and I first updated the contact info to him. A waited a couple of weeks and changed the comapny name and the created date is still showing 2004. That's for expired names.