Domain age

[irmscher]

I wonder why I see so many auctions with "aged" (7-15 years old) mediocre domain names go for $X,XXX whereas good names that have bee simply dropped or re-registered hardly make it to few hundred bucks most often.

I've been into SEO for quite a while and domain age alone doesn;t mean anything if there are no backlinks. So why people are ready to pay for domain age even if there's little to no backlinks?

 

[Kate]

Examples ?
Even without backlinks, search engines may look more favorably at older domain names, than fresh regs. End users may want older domains to look more 'established'.
But domains don't command $,$$$ prices just because they are 'old'. There a few closeouts at Godaddy, short names like 4L.net that are 20 years old. They can be bought for about $20 including renewal.

 

[poweredbyme]

I've been into SEO for quite a while and domain age alone doesn;t mean anything if there are no backlinks.

Domain age alone is a trust factor regardless of backlinks. Even age of backlinks is a trust factor. Your knowledge about domain age is simply wrong. Develop sites on aged domains, preferably 5+ years old domains.. You will notice the difference. Your content will get indexed faster and will rank better on SERP's. I developed many websites for the last 10+ years.

 

[irmscher]

Domain age alone is a trust factor regardless of backlinks. Even age of backlinks is a trust factor. Your knowledge about domain age is simply wrong. Develop sites on aged domains, preferably 5+ years old domains.. You will notice the difference. Your content will get indexed faster and will rank better on SERP's. I developed many websites for the last 10+ years.

Wait, so if for instance a 15 y/o domain expires and drops, but still has all those backlinks, in the eyes of Search Engines it will lose all its age?

 

[poweredbyme]

Wait, so if for instance a 15 y/o domain expires and drops, but still has all those backlinks, in the eyes of Search Engines it will lose all its age?

Dropped domains loss their authority permanently based on age. If they had no backlinks before they drop, they are similar to the newly registered domains for the first time. If they had backlinks they are slightly better, especially if they are re-developed with the same content with the same URL structure. I mean, you should be the owner of a dropped site to re-register it to benefit from its old backlinks or you should contact the old owner to get its content to reinstate the old website. Otherwise old backlinks will become irrelevant if you park it or develop with a different content. Those old backlinks can be seen as spam backlinks by search engines. If you can't reinstate the site with the same URL structure, the pages will give 404 error. 301 redirection doesn't really help as your page content will be irrelevant to the backlinked pages on other sites.

 

[Kuffy]

Didn't Google announce thet they were ignoring domain age, unless it is an established site of course.

 

[irmscher]

Didn't Google announce thet they were ignoring domain age, unless it is an established site of course.

Yes, I've heard this a number of times.

 

[rentmynames]

Yes, I've heard this a number of times.

But do they REALLY ignore the domain age ? We don't know. Myself don't think so.

 

[poweredbyme]

Didn't Google announce thet they were ignoring domain age, unless it is an established site of course.

I haven't heard it but I think definition of "established site" is a bit different than most people know.

What makes a site established in technical point of view? Is it accessibility to search engine bots? What makes a site accessible? Is it to receive http 200 response by client? So, aged domain = a DNS (A record IP) that resolves for years and a homepage that gives http 200 response for years. Existence of content comes later than those 2 basics: working DNS and http server. Therefore content isn't required as long as homepage is accessible. It can be a blank page or a parked page with no real content. As long as it gives http 200 response it's an alive domain.

Dropped domains
Domains which have been not registered yet
Domains with nameserver-dns-hosting problems
are same, they are dead, unaccessible domains and pages. Http 404 error are similar but not same with the "server not found" error.

Therefore those "dead" pages should be excluded from SERP's immediately. Because end user of search engines would hate to click on search results if the page isn't accessible. It would harm search engine reliability.
Search engine bots visit the domain and its internal pages regularly
-first to check if the page is still accessible
-and then to check if the content is changed or deleted or if new content/new internal page is added. Search engine bots first check if the page is online. If the page is accessible, it's cached by search engines unless there is an exclusion in robots.txt or in metatags or in http header. So, if the homepage is accessible to search engine bots, technically its domain is deemed as an established site even if there is no content. So "established site" is a domain that's accessible, gives http 200 response to SE bots. It doesn't matter if it was a parked domain (with no real content) for years. That page has been always ready to get indexed and get ranked as soon as you add content. Because search engine bots visited that "aged" domain for years and it has been always accessible since years. Age is a trust factor because of this.

 

[urlurl]

its perceived value,

 

[lambo.com]

With a few exceptions on a % basis, all the quality domains are aged, say before 1997.

 

[forge]

All I'm getting here are a bunch of vague claims with no real-world examples to back them up.

I agree that the majority of the "best of the best" aka single keyword .com names probably were registered prior to 1997. But I don't think that answers the initial question.

 

[forge]

Examples ?

Agree, need examples from the OP. Without them it's a baseless or just anomalous "observation".

 

[irmscher]

With a few exceptions on a % basis, all the quality domains are aged, say before 1997.

Yes, but some of the drop and then people are a lot less likely to buy them because it's shown like less than 1 year old on whois.

 

[siravi]

Domain age is very much important for SEO.

 

[vinsdomains.com]

I can say that I have sold many more aged domains than others that I have, even though I have less of them in my portfolio! That's a fact. Might not mean anything, but as a result, my buying patterns now focus on aged names and I've done well with them. You can see what I'm buying at my Aged site in my signature below.

 

[golan]

In SEO, domain age is very important factor, but not the most important. If the domain is just old but doesn't have good backlinks, the age means nothing. If it's just old but didn't have a site on it, or the site was built only a year ago, the age means nothing. But if it has good backlinks and has or had a good site on it, in this case the age has a very strong impact.