How important is the domain age?

[ClassTopic.com]

I just looked at the leapfish values of my sites. My grandfather domain that I haven't done work with in years is worth over $5,000. My new domain that I put hours and hours into: $250. Bottom line: DOMAIN AGE MATTERS.

[peter_d]

How much does domain name matter, do you think?

How have people tested the impact of domain age on rankings?

If a new domain ranks well, does this indicate the domain age may have less weight than other factors?

[peter_d]

That should read: "How much does domain age matter in terms of ranking, do you think? "

To clarify, I'm not saying domain age is unimportant. However, there is some confusion about its level of importance.

For example, new sites can avoid the "sandbox effect", and therefore make domain age irrelevant in terms of ranking, so long as they have enough indicators of quality/popularity.

The way to do that is to be talked about, a lot, by the right people.

[tdd1984]

Originally Posted by peter_d

That should read: "How much does domain age matter in terms of ranking, do you think? "

To clarify, I'm not saying domain age is unimportant. However, there is some confusion about its level of importance.

For example, new sites can avoid the "sandbox effect", and therefore make domain age irrelevant in terms of ranking, so long as they have enough indicators of quality/popularity.

The way to do that is to be talked about, a lot, by the right people.

do you know much about 301 redirects, and page rank passing anchor text? I"m buying a new company domain for our business, the domain is not even being used the guy has had it, and its from 1991, relevant to my well pretty much, but it only has like 100 back links so nothing to hurt a few might be off topic, but nothing major, but I was wanting to 301 redirect my current domain, but I know it passes the pr to the new domain, but does it pass my keywords along with it plugged into my old domain see what im saying?

[AllM]

In my experience, domain age matters, particularly for Yahoo or MSN Serps. Not as important for Google, but still matters some.

[ptamdagr8]

i believe older sites get a good ranking mostly because if it's older, it means google has time to have a crawl and other sites may have the knowledge that this site exist.

[SEOBoy]

According to me, domain name age factor do count, but what most counts is the link age factor(that too from quality source)

Many .edu/.gov websites are ranking better in SERPs, its mostly due to the amount of links they have accumulated with time. People do say, more preference is given to these websites but its link age they have which gives them chance to rank better.

After all, its about collecting links from quality places. A link from a quality website will count more then 100s of unrelated low quality links.

Youtube, out ranked other website because of large amount of links which it accumulated during the time period.

Everyone, had almost each linking pointing to it. Which did made it authority and quality link in much less time.

[lucia]

Google itself admits it considers freshness. Domain age matters. All other things being equal, an older domains are given an advantage over newer domains when you try to achieve a good google rank. However, domain age is not the be all and end all.

Bad, poorly organized old domains with no content and few incoming links will not outrank good, well organized newer domains with decent incoming links!

Google is working on algorithms to better deal with the freshness issue because their own pages got crossed up on this. You can read my comment on a NY time article -

[Cornbread]

Originally Posted by peter_d

That should read: "How much does domain age matter in terms of ranking, do you think? "


For example, new sites can avoid the "sandbox effect", and therefore make domain age irrelevant in terms of ranking, so long as they have enough indicators of quality/popularity.

The way to do that is to be talked about, a lot, by the right people.

New sites can not avoid the sand box effect, it is a myth to think you can link your way out of it. It is going to happen, just like paying taxes, you just have to accept that reality.

[lucia]

I don't know Cornbread, my less than two month old blog is now #2 for john chow traffic.

(Ok, I'll admit you are right. After all, who is fighting to be ranked highly on "John Chow Traffic". Still, I saw it in my site meter and marveled taht I was high on anything at all!)

I wasn't actually trying for that search term or any other! But the article that got me there was -

I've been curious about all these silly ranking tools. Today, I looked at the Alexa ranks of my sites and concluded that when you use it to compare the traffic of site, it may be off by, well, a factor of 20,000! -

[chicgeek]

lucia, please avoid posting multiple links to your own blog. There's a point where it's just blatant link-dropping.

[sniperhiga]

I don't know where it came from: "New websites can build links and Google will never send them in sandbox". I think that it is a bull.
Google more likely will never send old website in sandbox. If we take randon 100 sites which appeared last week... 95 of them will be crap and spam. Google filter new sites really fast.

[Rankenstein]

I think age of links is the one, like SEOboy said.

Cornbread says new sites can't avoid the sandbox. I've never personally seen a new site avoid the sandbox, but I'm assured it can happen if you can get the right IBLs. I'd like to hear from someone with first hand experience of this. (I've plenty of experience of being [i]in[i/] the sandbox, thank you very much.)

[Manish Pandey]

Originally Posted by jess12

Well, I guess youtube is an exception. If anyone can make a "unique" website that interest many people (as well as Google! -$1.6B-), there's no question your site will rank high on SE

Umm...IMO youtube got the 'trust' of it's millions of visitors and well you just can't say it as an exception..it was a unique experiment that helped the owners with appreciations and monetarily....

[Manish Pandey]

Originally Posted by littlebobek

I do not think that domain age is that important. Have a look at YouTube. Started 2 years ago but they were on top in SEs after few months on-line.

Domain age is one of the important factor you can't deny that but the "TrstRank" is the most important factor...

[Mark07]

Originally Posted by lucia

Google itself admits it considers freshness. Domain age matters. All other things being equal, an older domains are given an advantage over newer domains when you try to achieve a good google rank. However, domain age is not the be all and end all.

Bad, poorly organized old domains with no content and few incoming links will not outrank good, well organized newer domains with decent incoming links!

That is 100% true and yeah the age of the domain does matter for the ranking of the site. Old domains have better trustworthiness with Google than the newer ones until the new domains prove themselves with the quality of their site.

[Manish Pandey]

Originally Posted by sniperhiga

If we take 2 websites (new and old) and build 500 backlinks with the same anchor in 1 night.
New site will be most likely banned. Old domain will survive.

Like Peter asks...Well do you have any proof?

IMO both of the websites might get penalized for over doing linkings...guys why do you forget that we are here to do natural things...So do it naturally...It takes time to get rewarded and in the end you will get huge reward and self satisfaction of beating your competitors!

[podcast]

Well, the new fact I learnt from this thread is how the age of the domain is determined. Never knew about it.

[Manish Pandey]

Originally Posted by ClassTopic.com

I just looked at the leapfish values of my sites. My grandfather domain that I haven't done work with in years is worth over $5,000. My new domain that I put hours and hours into: $250. Bottom line: DOMAIN AGE MATTERS.

Well we are talking here in terms of influence of domain age on SEO and not selling the domains...that's another thing!

[Manish Pandey]

Originally Posted by Cornbread

New sites can not avoid the sand box effect, it is a myth to think you can link your way out of it. It is going to happen, just like paying taxes, you just have to accept that reality.

Well my dear friend! Many of the top SEOs have a different theory about sand box and how to avoid it! We tend to escape this age barrier of Google to some extent...