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

After a discussion in another thread about the age of a domain providing benefit with SEO and Rankings i'm doing another test.

I used a spare domain 10 Years 7 Months old which has no backlinks and isn't indexed and i just purchased the .net version also. I have put the exact page up on both domains, and given them both a backlink from the same PR5 page.

I will also link both from here:

www.italindex.com (10 Years 7 Months Old) and www.italindex.net (Registered Today)

On the page i have used some unique words with zero Google results, one with 5 results and various common words so searches can be done with quotes etc.

Lets see.

 

SOUNDS EXCITING. Looking forward to the end result.

You could make history.

 

To make the experiment more useful I would suggest adding a domain (even a few years old) that has never been transferred .. my 2c says google frowns on domains changing hands

Good experiment though and kudos for posting it live.

 

Let me know when you are done, PM me so i can make an article about this and provide a link to your website (if you have on) as well as your name looking forward to the results....

 

Isn't it funny how one experiment spawns another in this game, that's what i love about SEO.

I have hundreds of old domains, but i'm not sure what i can muster up with domains i have personally owned since day 1 as these are (i think) all active websites or have backlinks and indexed which would taint the experiment.

But i will dig through my domain lists and see about doing a transfered/never transfered domain experiment.

 

If you have the same content on both pages, don't you run the risk of one page getting excluded from Google's index because of the duplicate content penalty? Or maybe that is part of your experiment---which site gets excluded and which site gets kept?

 

Correct, both sites have exactly the same backlinks, content and keywords in the domain so the only difference is age. I done this same experiment before with different domains, and the aged one ranked best.

So that's what this experiment helps determine, if age has positive influence upon ranking with all things being equal.

Plus you will find one it won't be one domain ranks and the other doesn't with similar strength duplicate content. Different keywords will bring up one or the other.

 

that's exactly what I was thinking. As soon as one will be indexed, the other one will just be considered as a duplicate.
Interesting experiment. keep us posted

 

sweetfunny, good on you for conducting this experiment. I think it's high time that SEO became less of a pseudoscience, and the way to do it is by conducting rigorous experiments and making only falsifiable propositions.

Having said that, it's not a straightforward experiment to run.

Firstly, I think you do need to make sure that the order is based on the domain age and not the content age. The easiest way to do this, I think, would be to have unique content on each (say a few paragraphs of randomly generated character strings) but to include the same unique keyword on each.

Secondly, since you published the domains here (which I wouldn't have done) you will need to check that nobody is messing with your experiment by creating extra backlinks.

Finally, you need to see other sites in your SERP between italindex.com and italindex.net. Otherwise, as mentioned on the other thread, the result would be negligible. This is probably the trickiest part of the experiment.

Good luck with this. I'm very glad that our conversation on the previous thread lead to an experiment, rather than to the mindless bickering that often seems to surround SEO questions.

 

The content age on both domains is identical, i wrote the code and text in Notepad++ and uploaded them at the same time. As for having different content with similar words on each, that won't work. Google also bases importance of keywords upon the location they appear on the page.

So just having a keyword as the 20th word on one page, and the 21st on the other can be enough to skew the results.

I'm also running another identical test that's not published as a control, i've also run this once before so between the lot there will be enough data.

Thanks, i'm always running experiments like this but rarely publish any of them however your comments on the other thread prompted me to send this one live.

 

Sweet! I likey a lot.

How much do you want to bet that the aged domain outranks the new one on every single possible query?? $100?

Brilliant test. I hope you decide to share what you can here when you are satisfied with the results.

I would also love it if you could create one page just targeting a highly competitive kw. How about asbestos? Pop a few identical high pr backlinks to the page in each domain and see where they settle in the serps after a few weeks. My bet is that the new domain won't be found in the top 1k, while the aged one will rank within the top 100.

Awesome stuff sweet!!

 

Looking forward to the result

 

Sounds interesting....please let us know about the results when u r done

 

Yes I meant that the keywords upon which the experiment is based should be in the same place but that the surrounding text should be different, to avoid the duplicate content issue. If you would like me to write up a quick php script to do this for you, let me know.

 

Cap't Obvious has entered the building.

The question really should not be "which is better" rather "how much better the aged domain is"

Perhaps use the same words in different order & different titles and see if the aged domain outranks the new one for exact matches.

Or even better, get them the same content and then add 1 link a week to the new domain and then see when it overtakes the aged one ... then we can start to see how much more the aged domain is worth.

Now the experiment has more worth because we all know that the aged domain is worth more ... just how much more is the real question.

SF ... you've got my little gerbil running. I miss testing this stuff, haven't done it in a while as I have bigger fish to fry these days.

 

Hey, I kind of like that nic. Thanks!

How much better it ranks is a great question (restating the obvious, sorry, but that is what i do ). A duplicate content page on a high competition kw should give an answer to that, no?

 

this is good but there is a variable...one is .com and the other is .net

 

Probably not as the dupe penalty might send one down a few (hundred) SERPs. Probably randomizing the rest of the words (remembering LSI factors) and dropping the desired keyphrase in the exact same position would be your best bet.

I'm going to stick with some obscure key phrase and just build links on the new site until it surpasses the aged one. The biggest issue with this is simply the quality of the links (some links are better than others), but I think you could control this aspect a bit. The wrong answer would look something like "only 5 links negated the age factor". 5 directory links, 5 blog comments or 5 wikipedia links? ... see the issue?

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Hehe, I had no idea that there was a whole line of cartoons for captain obvious ... he's my new hero. My favorite from this page



/ end threadjacking /

 

Love the toon! I may make that my new avatar here in your honor. lolol Funny man.

But.. but... Let's say you create a unique article on "asbestos risks". Load the articles on each site. Place identical links to each site/ page. Keep adding the links until one or both of the sites pop into the top 1k. Then see how far apart they are.

Why wouldn't this work? (Sorry if my question is dumb, but I do that as well, in addition to obvious. lolol)

Good stuff Sweet. Very thought provoking.

 

Im going to subscribe to this thread and wait for the result.. its a good idea though.