If you read the google patent, it talks about domain advance registration may be a factor - i.e. a domain registered for 10 years may be given a boost vs a domain registered for one year. This was released several years ago and a lot of people experimented with it by adding years of registration to domains, some new, some very old. I haven't tested it recently, but there was absolutely no benefit, or the benefit was so small it wasn't able to be noticed. Just because the google patent talks about something, it doesn't mean it is being used. It also doesn't assign a weighting to each item in the algorithm - so even if they do give domain advance registration weight, it might only be .01% of the total algorithm. My conclusions (and others who did quite a bit of testing) is that there wasn't any noticeable benefit, but if you have a domain you know you are going to keep for 5 or 10 years, then there isn't going to be any harm in registering it for longer than one year - just don't do it expecting to see some jump in rankings. Since the patent has come out, google has hired over 10,000 people to do manual reviews of sites. Concentrating on improving your site and user experience (and of course, links from trusted authority sites) is now more important than ever.
that guy is not getting the concept behind it see the 1st post of mine and then the posts by 'arrisweb' & 'gr8liverpoolfan' good 1 by mjewel...added to ur rep
Im quite agree with him. aged domain helps. but it doesnt matter you buy links for 1 year term or several, it considers as a new domain and it cant help
I think registering for long period does help. although i would go about it this way, register your domain firstly for 12 months or 1 year. then at the 6 month point add another 3 years of registration to your domain. i figure the first 6 months you will be in the so called sandbox anyway and then just as you are starting to come out if you then add 3 years more to your registration,you might see an extra little boost.
Nobody can prove it! As mjewel wrote there are some traces of the concept in google patent, but that doesn't mean that your site will outrank your competitors just by registering a domain for a longer period of time. I'm pretty sure that it won't help getting more pages indexed, you would have to work in your insite linking structure to increase them. The myth is that it will help increasing rankings but I've never heard it would help getting more pages indexed. Sincerely I just can't find connection between spiderability and indexing with how long you bought a domain for. As far as rankings in my opinion it surely doesn't hurt, worst case scenario you spent $50 and you own the domain for 5 years. I'm sure that it really won't make a difference in a good SEO campaign, the domain age has much more relevance than for how long a domain was registered. Since you'll probably spend the money anyways over the years why not buying it for a longer period of time and maybe get some SEO benefits out of it.
I don't see how this would aid in search engine ranking at all. The search engine spiders have no way of seeing how long you domain is registered for, just that it is indeed registered. I does help when preventing you domain from getting snipped when you need to renew it and accidentally forget... that can be painful.
I think mjewel hit the nail on the head in regard to your question. I've always wondered the same thing, but have held off on renewing for an overly extended period thus far. While I plan to renew in the next few weeks, I thought it was best to see how the site would fair before making too long of an investment. Solid question though... its too bad that some of the responders failed to read the question nor see what the people posted before them.
Not true. This is no disputing that google has access to domain registration length (they are a registrar) and are known to access whois information to determine common ownership on domains (which they do use) - the only question is whether or not they use it as part of their algorithm. As their patent states, a "throw away" domain used for blackhat techniques isn't likely to be registered for more than a year as they don't want to waste money on a domain that is likely to be banned - the real problem is, most legitimate sites use auto-renew and don't register their domain for more than a year anyway. I suspect that this is why it doesn't appear it is a significant part of their algorithm. I know google has stated that they had a lot of problems with the 99 cent dot info (one year registrations) and I wouldn't be surprised if they pay more attention to .info domains. Some time ago, almost all .info rankings were removed from high SERPS - it only lasted a day, and Matt Cutts said it was an error. Go figure.
i am using a premium keyword and comp look up SEO software and one of the major factor is domain age, so yes it does matter.
You have been here for a while, isn't there a way to report all the users that are making this forum stink. Out of 500 new threads every day maybe 5 are about something interesting, 400 are the same subject with irrelevant questions asked over and over that can be answered with a simple google search and the other 95 are people keeping old useless threads alive posting useless comments that just make the thread heavier/longer without anything useful. The forum administrators should start cleaning DP a little cause it is getting annoying.
I do not believe it for a second that the length of the domain registration will help in increasing your PR. This is a trick used by SEO firms helping registrars getting more of your cash right than and there. There is no proof whatsoever that it helps. If you own or purchase an older domain, let's say 10 or 12 years old, chances are it has already a PR and the age could help increase it.
Who's talking about PR? PR comes from backlinks - A 12 year old domain that has never had content and backlinks is no different than a domain you registered today. Domain age (from when it started having content/indexed, not when it was first registered) is certainly a factor in the google algorithm.
Get more backlinks and original content if you want more pages indexed. Registering you domain for a longer period isn't going to do anything for indexing.
You will get a lot of that here... you had better get used to it As to your question I am not sure because I reg mine for one year at a time...