domain age

Does Domain Age Affect Ranking Ability On Google?

With ranking websites on search engines such as Google there are many different views, opinions and strategies put forward as to the best way to achieve success.

Does Domain Age Affect Ranking Ability On Google?

Seo is the practice of getting a website to rank on search engines such as Google by changing certain website elements (both on the website and off the website) so that they rank more effectively on a search engines algorithm. One element that people often have opposing views on is how important a ranking factor a domains age is and whether that plays a part in how the website ranks for competitive keywords.

 

domain age

 

A Closer Look

Google looks at many factors when it ranks a website and many of the factors are on page issues such as title tags and meta data factors and Google also looks at off page seo factors such as incoming links and social media signals. They also look at many other aspects of a website and that also includes the historical data of a domains age.

Google submitted a patent all the way back in 1995 which was granted after more than a decade later in 2008 which was named ‘Information Retrieval Based On Past Data’. Based on an interview from Google technician Matt Cutts, he suggests that the inception of the domain i.e. the date the domain is purchased is taken into account however one should not worry about it to much.

He then goes on to say that what Google will look at slightly more closely is when a domain has an indexed link back to the site and that can be used as a way Google sees the date of inception of a particular domain rather than the Who Is information.

What we can take from that is domain age is a factor (be it a small factor) when Google looks at how to rank a website, furthermore it is also fair to say the earlier a domain is registered then the earlier it is more likely to have an inbound link to it from another website and therefore Google will look at this as a more substantial ranking factor.

Example

If we look at a very competitive online market such as the football shirt retail market and for example we have 2 football retail websites that have good linking profiles, good on page seo and good social media followings, then this is when Google will look at some of the finer points to determine which to rank more highly.

If we then assume one of these football shirts retail websites domains has been registered for 10 years while the other is relatively new and has only been online for say, 2 years, it is fair to say that Google will give the 10 year old domain more authority and therefore rank it above the 2 year old domain.

Conclusion

We may never know exactly how Google formulates the algorithm; furthermore they are constantly tweaking it meaning that there is no real ‘right’ answer because the ‘right’ answer in seo is always changing. What is a fact is Google will look at domain age and when 2 websites are quite evenly matched then this will play a factor in how they rank the website.

Older domains will certainly have a little bit of an edge, but the importance of their age is often confused with the fact that older domains also tend to have a lot more backlinks (and natural backlinks) just due to the fact that they’ve had so many years to acquire them.But as long as your site has been around for longer than those first few months when domain age is a big factor, you should be able to swing with the oldest of them and claw your way to the top of your Google rankings!

Recommend website dnreserve.com for purchasing old domains.

Author profile :Jonathan works with Soccerbox who specialise in football shirt retail and football merchandise retail in the online market.