Does Domain Age Really Matter? ->Experiment Inside<-

Oh don't worry i've got much better fish to fry also, little things like this break up the 12-18 hour days looking at nothing but code, keywords and backlinks.

Now, with the whole duplicate content thing people are confusing how it works. Because they are duplicate it does not mean one copy will be flung off the face of the earth and the other won't. It will depend on the terms queried, one may rank for 50% of the terms and the other 50% the other.

About 9 months ago someone believed "First copy indexed ranked", and we done a duplicate content knockout experiment and i showed him this was false by copying the content and HTML of his PR3 page and knocking him out for virtually every term queried. Even today after i removed nearly all the links to my copy the results are mixed:

This Term #2 Him and #10 Me
This Term #1 Me and #2 Him
This Term #1 Me and #49 Him
This Term #1 Him and Me #2

And so on switching who ranks highest depending on query as they have a similar authority. So with this test i'm doing now you "can" get a pretty good idea on how much stronger the old domain is by what percentage of the queries it ranks highest for.

By putting different content on each version just introduces variables that will skew the experiment because we can't measure these variables. Same with adding a backlink a week to the newly registered domain, you can't measure these links with any accuracy so it still won't tell us how much more the old domain is worth.

When doing any experiment, never introduce things that cannot be measured accurately.

 

Hmm... I thought that both sites (with identical pages) would both rank for every possible query. The difference would be that one would rank higher than the other. It's not that "duplicate content" would knock one off any serps, it's just that one (the one with the most juice) would outrank the other in all possible queries. Is this right? I'm a little confused (nothing new).

It seems like you are saying that the stronger domain in your test will just rank higher for more queries. I would honestly think that the stronger domain would outrank for all queries in this test, and not just more. Interesting.

Very cool.

 

How long will the experiment be conducted for?
Will you show results for which one got their first, and which one lasted the longest?

Will you throw in the google sandbox theory for the new domain?

 

As long as it takes, i will let it run for a while to monitor changes and when the experiment reaches a point it's stable and a conclusion is reached i will throw some other things in to the mix.

You can visit the pages and query terms yourself to see the results, this is the idea of a public experiment.. It's not just me saying xyz, you can see xyz with your own eyes.

 

will you also give us access to the google analytics, and webmaster tools?

 

This experiment is more about the effect on "ranking" in the SERP's between a domain that's over a decade old compared to one a day old when everything else is equal such as keywords in domain, content and backlinks.

You can see this directly on Google, but sure if there's any server stats you want i can post them.. Although most the hits will be from DP.

 

Just a quick update:

The aged .com version is indexed in Google & Yahoo, however the new .net version isn't indexed in any engine yet.

So, the aged domain has been indexed faster than the new domain.

 

Exciting and looking forward to a result

 

Also just to add here so it's recorded, the old .com took just 9 hours to be cached and as of this post the new .net still isn't cached.

For the .com version:

Page Uploaded: 14 Jul 2008 17:29 GMT
Page Cached: 15 Jul 2008 02:33 GMT

 

This shouldn't take long to see some results.

 

What a great experiment! I'll definitely be watching this thread with interest - thanks so much for posting it!

 

Very interesting. So the aged domain is already showing its strength. Good info.

 

Update: Day 5

* The .net version still isn't cached in Google, Yahoo or MSN
* The .com version is cached in Google, Yahoo but not MSN
* Yahoo has the PR5 backlink showing for the .com but nothing for the .net
* There is now zero results for the .net even the DP posts have gone
* The .com is showing 3 Googlebot hits and 9 Yahoo Slurp hits.
* The .net is showing 2 Googlebot hits and 6 Yahoo Slurp hits.
* No natural search hits for the .com yet

 

great idea, please post the the outcome here

 

Sweetfunny, good luck with expirement, don't forget to email me over the results.

 

Well, the problem is, it has to stay a pseudoscience, because if anything like this proves something without a doubt, google can change the whole game overnight

the problem with doing a test of any sort and publicizing it greatly in a forum like this, is that google will take notice and shake things up a bit

it is better not to draw too much attention to little things you figure out as you go along

 

I'm not sure I agree with you, even though your logic sounds strong and I follow exactly what you are saying and agree in theory.

Google won't all of a sudden make new domains more powerful (or as powerful) as old domains just because the info has become public. They might do something like a time staggered discount after the domain name changes hands (which they probably already do) but that's not the inverse of this experiment.

Probably if we got a site de-indexed by some link bashing, xss cracks or spammy link development on abused guest books and posted it publicly they might fix the problem. But definitely not something like this experiment.

 

yeah, I agree with you that this particular experiment may not be that big of a deal, but I guess my post was more of an overall concept, as I see that kind of problem all over the place, with anything from link building techniques to automated spamming techniques

 

Nice experiment. Well certainly domain age matters ...becuz of their trust and authority over a new domain.

Keep us posted.

 

as per I know .com domains have preference over .net and are ranked better. In this case .com is 10 yr old which is obviously going to rank better than .net.

please correct me if i am wrong.