Same, i have not seen any evidence future registration has any effect. I've registered quite a lot of domains for 5-10 years in advance and never seen a benefit in rankings. I've done it on new domains right out of the gate, and older ones with stable rankings. As for current domain age, yes this does help.
In my experience domain age seems to help a lot. I had a new .co.uk domain that ranked well in the UK after about 5 months work on link-building but was nowhere in other countries. After 5 months I spent 3 months concentrating on product development and pretty much ignored the website. In these 3 months the site begain to rank well in other countries, e.g. Google South Africa and Australia. It's not a scientific test by any stretch of the imagination but all I can put it down to is ageing. Coincidentally, the biggest improvement in ranking seemed to occur in the 2 weeks running up to a Google Pagerank toolbar export (even though my PR hadn't changed). Maybe age related factors are adjusted by Google at these points.
If a domain is online and is old, then I guess it will have domain age as a factor in the SERPs. But is a domain is only old, with no useful content and no good backlinks, in that case, it will not affect much on SERPs.
its really confusing to see so many discussing but no providing any evidence or links to actual text where it is mentioned either by Google or any other engines that your search engine rankings is affected by the age of the domain. personal experiences can be helpful but unless official text is there, it is not worth a discussion.
Interesting.. I've heard all sorts of theories over the years about how google ranks and I've heard age of domain brought up several times, so I'm sure it must play SOME role.
Dude, you're beating a dead horse if you think google is going to tell you their current ranking algorithm. There is no public official text of what googles current ranking algorithm is. Why don't you experiment yourself - and try reading the google patent to gain insight on what might be currently used (which can be found with a simple google search)? This is part of the "official" google patent: "Ranking domains for search engines is provided herein. To rank a domain, contributing domains associated with the domain are identified. Additionally, the maturity of each of the contributing domains is determined. A rank for the domain is then determined based at least in part on the maturity of each of the contributing domains. The domain rankings may then be used to order results for search queries." "For example, in an embodiment, domains that have been registered for more than ten years may contribute 100% of their accumulated ranks to a target domain’s rank; domains that have been registered from six to ten years may contribute 75% of their accumulated ranks to a target domain’s rank; domains that have been registered from three to six years may contribute 50% of their accumulated ranks to a target domain’s rank; domains that have been registered for one to three years may contribute 25% of their accumulated ranks to a target domain’s rank; and domains that have been registered for less than one year may only contribute 10% of their accumulated ranks."
In this latest update I have seen some of competitors sites jump back into the top 10 (top 5 in fact for one particular site) that site has had no new content since March, and has had virtually no new backlinks. No new content and no links, yet jumps to top 5 during last update??? The only thing that site has over mine is 2 years longer domain registration.
if this is similar to what is writen in the official text, then i am sure we should find ways to buy old domains and work on them instead of purchasing new ones and waiting for them to get aged
Is it possible to buy a domain and change it for another named that is free, in order to get the age of the old domain? Of course, not the backlinks...
the domain age is mean how long has the index or main file been indexed. if the domain is 10 years old but has been dropped or got no indexed for a while, then it has been transfered, that is not count.
if observed carefully they does play a role, i have a domain registered in feb 2007 which is not at all seo optimized but still it ranks pretty high up in google serp. In comparison to it, I purchased one domain some six months back and inspite of lot of seo, it is still way down serp.. There is difference though, the one which is new and search engine optimized acquired a pr but the old one haven't yet!!
Yes, it does, as long as there are backlinks, and metags etc. I keep about 20 domains ready. If G bans a site or give it a penalty, then there is a domain to reload the site too. Bang! Four weeks serp monster
PR Toolbar is just a toy put there to keep us watching the left hand while the right hand is actually the one doing stuff.
content do matter, but as quoted in this thread some posts back, that search engine algos do respect a domain credibility build over the yrs.
perfect.. so most of the dp members.. i suppose agree to this fact that old domains have mostly higher serps provided they have been indexed and have useful content mapping to the domain names..