I was speaking with godaddy the other day and the person said on the phone that my domain was expiring in 5 months and if I bought 10years worth of service it would improve my search engine rankings, could this actually be true? I was thinking they are probably just trying to get extra business. Thanks in advanced for your Advice Tammy
The commonly-held opinion is that it helps to have your domain paid up for some years ahead. I'm currently paid five years ahead. It is believed that the search engines see that as an indicator that your website is not fly-by-night, quick-buck-and-out-of-here.
The age of domain helps in good ranking, as it build trust. If extending the registration helps in ranking, everyone around will be registering it for 10 years as its very small price to pay. Tharani
My dear friend It's just useless to buy for 10 years. Take this example. A person wants to buy goods from a retails who is very intelligent right. So what he will do ? He will check the price at other stores, inquiry from his friends and neighbours and etc. So you only give me reply that do you think that this person should go and ask the grocer or anyother person that "is this shop on rent or his own shop" in order to check his genuinenity ? do you think anyone of us do this ? No its a stupid question so why google will give importance to a domain with 1 year or 10 years ? cool Mate and Enjoy your day
The original poster's question is not stupid at all. There are many professionals in the webmastering field who believe that domains that are paid up beyond one year are interpreted by the search engines as "for real", rather than quick-buck artists buying the domain for the minimum one year.
I am a bit tempted to register for 10 years after reading the discussion here. I have had the same domain from 2003 and am now looking into setting up other websites too. Basically, I woke up to SEO last year and that's the reason I have had only a single domain. Now, how do you guys manage to remember that five years are up. I have changed multiple email addresses and don't know how many I might need to change in the next five. How do you ensure that the domain doesn't expire because you never get the reminder to renew it...
You can test this so called theory in search results for competitive keywords, you'll see almost "no" pattern in registration length in the results. This would lead me to the theory that this "myth" was actually started by registrars to increase sales.
I do get the reminder email to renew it. But usually when I register or renew a domain, I would also renew those that are going to expire in 1-2 years time.
There's another special reason for paying your domains well in advance that applies to only a few of us few "seniors" on Digital Point. And that is our age (64 for me). I have a nonprofit site that I want to keep alive after I'm gone. Not to be morbid, but if I don't wake up one of these mornings, at least my website will still be online giving out its free information for the five more years I've paid for my domain in advance.