I posed this question at another forum, with no response thus far. So I'm asking you guys here, and hoping for some answers. What do you use to look up a domain's age? What do the search engine's use (for consideration for ranking, etc)? Do they look at the date it was first registered, or if it dropped at one point, the subsequent registration? I was trying to find the age of some domains I have, and it appears that different online tools look at different things. For example...one says one of my domains is 8 yrs old, while another says it is 4yrs 5 months.
Domain age might play a factor in search results, but it's most likely a minor one. The theory is that if the domain name stays under the same ownership and keeps the same content and url structure it shows search engines the site is trustable.
Yes it does, it's just not the answer your looking for. Search engines can tell if a domain name has changed ownership, most of them are a registrar anyways and have access to data you can't see publicly. Tools just use the whois data to figure out the actual domain age, most pull data from one source, which is stupid. You would want to use the actual registrar's whois database to look up that information.
In My IMHO Domain age Help in SERP. Seach Engines look at the date it was first registered. Buy if you purchase expired domain then it won't give too much help.
You changed your post on me. Either that or a mod did. I know there is dispute about how much if any weight domain age has in ranking. Your second post just now, however, did address the question better. So what you are saying is that the search engines look only at the length of time of the last registration, as shown in the WHOIS?
Well, no one actual knows what they look at. The theory is the actual registration data, but people buy sites and transfer it over and don't lose rankings, same goes for transfering between regisitrars. In theory when you move to a new registrar your resetting the domain age.