Testing the domain registration myth...

I have a site that has been live for about 10 months. No sandbox, loads of backlinks, PR5, but stuck in the 80's in ranking. Drops to the 100's and then comes back, but I haven't seen it get under page 8.

I just renewed the domain for 2 years... let's see if that helps in anything

 

Interesting.

Keep us posted please!

Thanks.
Mike

 

was that supposed to be beneficial?

So far doesn't seem to be.

Lisa

 

I doubt very much whether the expiry date matters one whit...

If longevity is indeed a factor (and that isn't established yet), it would be how long the site has been live, not how many years until domain expiry.

I could buy a new domain today and register it for 10 years. That site could (a) never have more than a landing page on it, or (2) go bust and offline in 6 months.

 

I agree that the age of the domain should also count, but what people are saying is that google is looking at the length of your registration and saying "ok, this site is registered for 5 years, then it should be a serious webmaster".

Seems that one-year domains are used to build spam sites, scraper sites and similar.

I don't know, but for 20 bucks I must as well do a test. It is a good site which I plan to keep, so I am happy to renew it for 2 years, and if I do see any improvement I will register it for 10

At least Google can look at my site now and say "ok, this one has been online for almost a year, and just renewed for another 2 years, so it isn't a garbage domain"

 

If you have a successful site, and have the ready cfash, it doesn't hurt to register it for multiple years anyway.

I understand the hypothesis, fryman -- and I'm not even trying to dissuade you from the "experiment" -- but I just don't see any logic to it. The Google engineers are not stupid people and with domain registrations as cheap as they are now, especially multi-year registreations, expiry date is just way too unreliable as a marker of anything meaningful at all.

 

Yeah... I saw a discussion about this being included in the google patent, but can't find it. Oh, well... I just like testing myths... I should be included in a special internet section in the Mythbuster's program on Discovery Channel

 

I am from Romania and here domains ending with ".ro" are for life. Once I register it it's mine for ever. Will Google put it first in the serps? Don't think so

 

I have had a site for about 4 years, decent rankings. A few months ago I changed the renewal from 1 year to 5 years, it didn't seem to do anything.

 

there is not way google would burden itself with WHOIS checks for 8 billion webpages.

This is just absolute fantasy!

 

It is in their patent...

 

Actually, it would only have to check 4 million and 1. Fryman owns the other 4 million.

 

.........

 

Your fantasy may be realised

Google became an a ICANN Accredited Registrar in January and said at the time "While we have no plans to register domains at this time, we believe this information can help us increase the quality of our search results".

My impression is that the whois database is used for spam detection rather than parametric input to the Google ranking algo.

- Michael

 

It certainly can’t hurt to put it to the test. I have heard this as well and would be interested in testing it also. I’ll try a few domains, see what happens and post the results. How accurate they will be? Who knows, but if enough try it may provide good information.

 

Keep us posted please. I wonder what would happen if proven true? hihihi..

 

THe problem here is that there really doesn't seem to be any established time frame... it could take a week, a month, 3 months... or it could just not work, who knows.

Until now it hasn't done any difference at all

 

Yup, actually I think it's one of the reasons why Google won't probably use it. Because an expiring domain doesn't really mean a non-renewing domain.

 

Fryman does have a point. If someone is willing to spend $100 on just the registration, they are pretty committed compared to the guy willing to spend $7 on a registration.

It makes sense because it financially commits the webmaster for many years.