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Why everyone bothers about the age of a domain?

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codersabir

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If a domain has a cool name, is its age a matter of concern?
 
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Age has almost no effect on a domain's value. It's nice to have, as it makes the name look desirable and it may help a tiny bit with SEO, but it's like having new paint job on a house you are selling. Not a deal breaker, but nice to have.

Conversely, age is one useful metric when trying to narrow down drop lists. Aged names are more likely to be good names. Lots of domainers register ridiculous names and keep them for a few years. They are less likely to keep a silly name for 10 years. It happens, of course, but it's less likely. That makes age one of the dozen or more ways there are to help narrow down a list.

I often see domains being sold on this forum as "aged." And they are 3 or 5 years old. That's not age. That's a domainer who registered a bad name and was silly enough to renew it for 5 years. (I have a few of those.)
Wow, great reply. That's probably the best way I have seen this put! :D

Post of the day candidate here!
 
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Conversely, age is one useful metric when trying to narrow down drop lists. Aged names are more likely to be good names.

Yes exactly, when people post on the wanted forum requesting "Aged Domains" they are often trying to narrow down the enquiries in this way and thereby separate the wheat from the chaff. Split any large 100k portfolio between names registered within the last 5 years and those registered 10 years or more ago and the quality difference will be obvious to anyone.

However, I think the SEO aspect still does matter and will for the foreseeable future even if its weighting and importance will often change. SE's always have a great incentive to make sure that their algorithms are not widely understood because it helps to discourage a "gaming of the system" so to speak and so you can always expect a lot of counter intelligence. The creation date is one data point (among hundreds) which cannot be changed and therefore it is one data point for a search engine that is highly reliable and should be a factor within algorithms for some time.

Having said that, I think these days Google looks much more to how long a website has been actually indexed and ranked in a particular subject area than to the age of the domain name...
 
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That's a really good question... I'll be watching to see what other responses you get...

But from an SEO point of view, the older the domain the more likely it has gained "trust"
in the eyes of "Google", so your site is more likely to outrank a competing domain that
was newly purchased say like... yesterday. Especially if you both are trying to rank in the
top 10 results for the same niche related key word.

From a Backlinking point of view, the older the domain, the more likelihood the domain has
these key factors:

  1. Page Rank: Which is the number usually from 0-9 and determines a page's importance, reliability and authority on the web according to Google.
  2. Domain Authority: Which determines how credible a domain/website is from 0-100.
So if you have an aged domains with good page rank, and domain authority, and you decide to buy a brand new url for whatever project you want to work on... in "theory" your aged backlink domain should and will be able to give your brand new url a "boost" in the Google Search Results... But of course there a few more things you would have to do to attain page 1 results.

so is hand registering a brand new name not really a good idea, unless you plan to hold it for years and/or develop it, etc?
 
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It's all about the name. Aged could have 'spammy' back links! This is hardly ever mentioned and something that should be checked prior investment.
 
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so is hand registering a brand new name not really a good idea, unless you plan to hold it for years and/or develop it, etc?
It doesn't matter how old the name is! One day or one decade. If it's a good name that has potential buyers, don't worry about regging new names. If you find a good one, get it reg'd and don't think twice about it's age.
 
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If a .com's available for hand reg today, the chances are it's worthless, unless you look for the next big thing, get lucky with brandables, go for different extensions or get just plain lucky.

All the true premium domain's were registered when the pool was at it's fullest (10 + years) and as time's gone by, the choice and quality has diminished to a point were today you need to run 100,000 names through software to maybe find one meaningful .com

Age isn't the reason why older domains are more valuable when you take backlinks out the equation, it's just that they're better domain names.
 
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so is hand registering a brand new name not really a good idea, unless you plan to hold it for years and/or develop it, etc?

That's not a question that has a simple answer, it really just depends on what your use will be for the domain that you buy.

If you want to buy a domain for seo purposes to rank a few niche keywords, older domains that have a direct relation to your niche is the best route.

If you want to buy a domain for business purposes, you can win either way with a new or older domain.

If you want to by a domain for reselling/flipping then the age of the domain only would matter to the end user and what their use would be after the purchase.

Hope that helps.
 
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Lots of great points here and love this thread! I'll chirp in and say that my largest sales have been aged names and I've sold many more aged names that newer ones (or hand registered), although I have also had some nice sales with the newer ones, hand regged dot coms and even some new Gs. The previous points about being a good name that someone else wants is all that really matters in consummating sales , although in my experience, aged domains have a leg up when it comes to actual sales. It's one stat that isn't tracked or reported on much and most platforms don't even have an aged sorting feature, so maybe it's not that important to most...but I love them, as evidenced by Aged.domains!
 
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