Domain age and SERPS

[FPForum]

In my time of doing seo I have read domain age can play a big role on how your site ranks in the search engines..My question is, if I picked up an expired domain will the se's still give me credit for the domain going back to 2003 or will it not get any "credit" for that?..Thanks in advance!

 

[squatter]

If you buy an "old" domain, you'll avoid the risk of getting into the "sandbox".

There is a bad thing, however, if the previous owner used any method of black hat optimization, the site may be banned.
While replying to you, I found another seoforum, and I was absolutely astonished to read there that Google doesn't like expired domains, Yahoo, Msn index new sites at once, but there are problems with Google.

 

[Amnezia]

Google is a registrar which means they can easily detect when a domain expires and changes owners. I would be very wary buying expired names for their ranking or pagerank.

 

[squatter]

Hi, Amnezia! I'm afraid I didn't quite get your idea. Google isn't the only registrar, then anybody can detect the expiry date using whois. And also, in my slightly confusing post above I meant that the change of owners isn't something that Google likes, as it presupposes the site isn't stable, so the visitors may not like it.

 

[loran76]

You know I'd never buy an expired domain. It can cause many troubles in future.

 

[squatter]

You know I'd never buy an expired domain. It can cause many troubles in future.

Why? I don't think expired domains are the evil, just make sure they haven't banned, and if it's a good domain name with a good extension I see no reason not to buy it for the project.

 

[Datalife]

Lets suppose the name is just a name you thought of, and so you go and register it. Later you find out that there used to be a site with that name....maybe a couple of years ago...so it is an expired domain after all....

Actually truth is, many names we think we were so smart to come up with, has actually been used before....or at least registered.

Now, upon checking, you find the domain probably has been banned by Google in the past for unscrupulous activities of some kind or the other.

How do you get it unbanned and clean again in Google's eyes? That is the question I'd be most interested to know...

Where do you contact Google and ask them about the status of your domain? (And get the answer fast?)

Expired names may or may not have a good record with Google, that's the thing, but we wont know that when we register a name.

 

[SEO Montreal]

You can buy old domains that haven't dropped. For example, I have pizard.com that was originally reg'd in 1997 :D. A friend is selling more domains of a similar nature that were reg'd in the 90s if you want. Point is, these won't be counted as new regs.

 

[whitebark]

You can buy old domains that haven't dropped. For example, I have pizard.com that was originally reg'd in 1997 :D. A friend is selling more domains of a similar nature that were reg'd in the 90s if you want. Point is, these won't be counted as new regs.

But if you change the content completely then it is for all purposes a new website.

 

[Aesthetic]

How do you get it unbanned and clean again in Google's eyes? That is the question I'd be most interested to know...

Where do you contact Google and ask them about the status of your domain? (And get the answer fast?)

These are very inresting questions, thу information whether the site has or hasn't been banned by Google might significantly influence its price.

 

[Datalife]

I was just typing random domains into an online SEO search tool one day, and this is just what I observed...
I noticed that many old domains, 6-7 years old, are not Google indexed, but indexed in MSN and Yahoo. These are mostly without a site or parked domains. Could it be these domains are banned by Google or dropped totally from their index? I would have thought them being so old would have some kind of benefit...unless they are already banned. Many were good keyword types. That's rather puzzling.

 

[Aesthetic]

Datalife, your suggestion is really interesting, but if they are really that old, their must be some time limits for being banned. 6-7 years? too long

 

[Datalife]

Those were almost always parked domains or domains not resolving, with zero index in Google, as in search on Google - site:www.name.com

Result is no data


I searched a bunch of good keyword domains, many seem quite old at least on IWeb but then IWeb doesnt quite recognize dropped and retaken domains either...anyway I noticed very few were indexed. Coincidence or the whole lot just ignored by Google? Even if they were dropped and then reregged, must have had a long almost continuous history, since those were good names.

So just a thought that as the internet gets older, there will probably be no more .com names that are "virgin", in future virtually all .com names will be "second hand" names, at least those fair to good quality .com names. Some, or maybe many, wont have a good "past"...so its going to be abit of a drag to make them "good" again.

 

[nmr86]

i have a 2 year old domain, but it is not showing up in google index.. but it has pagerank of 3

weird.. i just developed it again, i hope it will be back soon in google

 

[Mong]

Its better to pick old domain if it qualifies all your other needs .. like keyword(s) and niche symbols.

But you *must* concentrate on other seo things like quality inbound link building and on page optimization to get advantage of having old domain otherwise you will get nothing.