How much weight does domain age give?

Discussion in 'Search Engine Optimization' started by AJO, Nov 28, 2008.

  1. #1
    All of my competitors have domains from the late 90's. Mine is 2006. My competition has a small amount of backlinks (at least what Yahoo shows) but I can't seem to get anywhere near them. How much weight does a domains name give afterall?
     
    AJO, Nov 28, 2008 IP
  2. mickmel

    mickmel Peon

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    #2
    It's almost certainly factored in, though it's hard to quantify what it's worth.

    Another angle they probably have over you is link age. There are some that believe that older links are more valuable than newer links, given comparable quality.

    It could be a combination of both.
     
    mickmel, Nov 28, 2008 IP
  3. prima

    prima Peon

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    #3
    It doesn't weith too much for search engine ranking but yest it's good to have old domain
     
    prima, Nov 28, 2008 IP
  4. mjewel

    mjewel Prominent Member

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    #4
    mjewel, Nov 28, 2008 IP
  5. cnvseo

    cnvseo Guest

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    #5
    Domain age is important in point of view of SE algorithm. Old domains improve value of the site. And also SE give importance to such domains.
     
    cnvseo, Nov 28, 2008 IP
  6. arizonawebdesign

    arizonawebdesign Active Member

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    #6
    Old domains are much better than newer domains, as they are more trusted by G. I always look for old domain backlinks first.
     
    arizonawebdesign, Nov 29, 2008 IP
  7. ashisharora_83

    ashisharora_83 Peon

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    #7
    Domain age doesn't matter much. If your site is well optimized and have good no. of backlinks, you will get better ranking than your competitors irrespective of your domain age.

    --Ashish
     
    ashisharora_83, Nov 29, 2008 IP
  8. rai123

    rai123 Active Member

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    #8
    I think domain age also matters. The old domain is more trustable then the new one. I recently started work on loan websites. The backlinks of our loan websites is more than our competitors, good content and also good keyword selection but we are below the competitor. The reason is that our 3 competitor's domains are 5 yrs old and our is just 6 months.
     
    rai123, Nov 29, 2008 IP
  9. seajetseo

    seajetseo Peon

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    #9
    Get more backlinks from aged domain might be useful
     
    seajetseo, Nov 29, 2008 IP
  10. Lofty

    Lofty Member

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    #10
    I think it is a factor, but you also need to remember that an older site is also likely to have built a higher number of aged backlinks as well. I've seen new domains outrank older established domains - and to me this makes sense as Google also needs to include new fresh content in the serps.
     
    Lofty, Nov 29, 2008 IP
  11. gr8liverpoolfan

    gr8liverpoolfan Notable Member

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    #11
    It matters, but you can't really say what percentage of the algorithm it really accounts for.

    Maybe your competitors have better quality links. They could also have the exact keyword in their domain name, which could be one of the many reasons why they rank better than you.
     
    gr8liverpoolfan, Nov 29, 2008 IP
  12. chewie49

    chewie49 Well-Known Member

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    #12
    I wonder:

    If I buy a dropped domain name that is 10 years old, is it really 10 years old or the age counts from the moment I buy it?

    I ask this because I recently bought a 7 years domain name, but when I looked at the whois information, it said it was just 3 weeks old (the time since I buy it)
     
    chewie49, Nov 30, 2008 IP
  13. Chancey

    Chancey Well-Known Member

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    #13
    Domain age will help a site to get a better position on search engine.
     
    Chancey, Nov 30, 2008 IP
  14. chewie49

    chewie49 Well-Known Member

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    #14

    Anybody could please answer this?

    Thanks!
     
    chewie49, Dec 5, 2008 IP
  15. banker0679

    banker0679 Well-Known Member

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    #15
    it says 3 weeks old for 2 reasons

    1. You were lied to about the age
    2. The domain was 'dropped' and never renewed

    more than likely it's #2

     
    banker0679, Dec 5, 2008 IP
  16. Navneet Kumar

    Navneet Kumar Peon

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    #16
    I think Google give a little bit weight for age, don't think ur site not come at ranking, make regular link building
     
    Navneet Kumar, Dec 5, 2008 IP
  17. catanich

    catanich Peon

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    #17
    The age of a site is very important but the question is what determins the starting point.

    I have a site that I bought 10 years ago and never used. 1 month ago, I put up a home page. Is the site 10 years old or 1 month? Age is reported as 10 years.

    ***********

    This same 10 year old site was just indexed one week ago for the first time. It therefore will be in the Google Sandbox where the "6 months" starts one week ago or the "first indexed date".

    ***********

    Now 10 years ago, from my production web site, I placed a link to the 10 year old site that did not exist. The link has been in place for the past 10 years.

    Does Google is this link as a 10 year old link or a one week old link? Google will consider this a 10 year old link.

    ***********

    From my production web site, I place another link to the 10 year old site but from another page in my production web site. Does the link age start now or when Google indexes this other page? Google will start the clock on the first index date.

    ***********

    The big question is what happens to an existing link when it is edited or changed. 3 years ago, we benched marked this concept. 3 links were placed on my home page to 3 seperate pages. Each were SEOed with the title attribute.

    Google indexed all three pages within one week and in 6 months, were reported as "links".

    One year later, we edited the first link's anchor text. The link vanished. But came back within 2 months.

    6 months later, we edited the second link's title attribute. The link vanished for 1 month and then came back.

    The third was never edited and never vanished.

    ***********

    Anyone that states the age of the SEO elements is not important doesn't know what they are talking about. Google will hit you for over SEOing or changing the On-Page SEO elements to often.

    And finally, look at my Sigs, the first Sig is reported in Webmaster Tools since it was there from the start. 4 months ago, I edited the anchor text of my second Sig. They have vanished and are not being reported.

    4 months ago, I changed the third Sig from my site to an other site, 1 month ago, these links are being reported in it's WMT.

    The last one is attached to a different site and I have changed the anchor text 3 times in the past 4 months. The links are reported in the site's WMT but so is the different "anchor text versions".

    *************

    I hope this helps the discussion...
     
    catanich, Dec 5, 2008 IP
  18. Corwin

    Corwin Well-Known Member

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    #18
    We are talking about domain age here, what about page age?

    I have a website that is a directory of widget manufacturers. Here is an experiment I tried.

    The typical manufacturer page is of the format:
    /widget.asp?i=83
    This is for the widget manufacturer "ABC Corporation", a well-known manufacturer of widgets with $7B in sales annually. It has been at this URL for seven years. The only links to this page from anywhere are my ten internal links. For the search term "ABC Corporation" it ranked #5 in Google.

    As an experiment, for ONLY this manufacturer, I changed the page name (and all links) to:
    /widget.asp?ABC_Corporation

    I wanted to see if using the search phrase in the query string like this would change page ranking.

    First week, it ranked up to #3 in Google. Then, it went down to the 2nd page of search results. A month later, it was in the 5th page and never got higher.

    What caused this? Is the lower page ranking a condition of page age? Bad query string format? Or something else?

    I'm guessing that the page age does have something to do with this.
     
    Corwin, Dec 9, 2008 IP
  19. banker0679

    banker0679 Well-Known Member

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    #19
    it's considered a new page

    google views the domain age and first time page was cache age

    updating one page will hurt your rankings for that single page.
     
    banker0679, Dec 9, 2008 IP
  20. giorgioarmani

    giorgioarmani Well-Known Member

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    #20
    The whole online SEO world is becoming more like the real world....

    An established company is much harder to beat in the real world...
    An established website is much harder to beat in the online world....

    Age definitely matters... It's not everything but it definitely matters!
     
    giorgioarmani, Dec 9, 2008 IP