Domain Age

[MaxS]

How important is a domain's age to you?

Also, what if the domain is old but hasn't ever been used (parked or even just a blank page)? How much does the value decrease?

[rpanella]

I think the reason domain age is beneficial is due to established backlinks that it receives over time. A 5 year old site that has accumulated links at a natural pace is most likely seen as more trustworthy and a brand new domain with no links. Due to this I don't think that a page that has been parked for years and doesn't have any links would be much better than a newly registered domain in terms of SEO.

Of course, older domains also tend to be higher quality (ie shorter, single keyword, etc) simply due to the fact less domains are available now.
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BIG DICK SEX

[MaxS]

Right. That's a shame - I see so many old/quality domains posted for sale but most are simply parked at Sedo or have displayed a blank page for years.

[Chris]

I think the reason domain age is beneficial is due to established backlinks that it receives over time. A 5 year old site that has accumulated links at a natural pace is most likely seen as more trustworthy and a brand new domain with no links. Due to this I don't think that a page that has been parked for years and doesn't have any links would be much better than a newly registered domain in terms of SEO.

Of course, older domains also tend to be higher quality (ie shorter, single keyword, etc) simply due to the fact less domains are available now.

Exactly, its not that an old domain is beneficial purely because of it's age, its that old domains have all this baggage that comes with them that are generally beneficial.

[affiliates7]

- domain age important to avoid search engines sandbox which can destroy all your effort.
- domain age more important if they have many links and page rank that will help you to rank well with search engines
- do not forget that domain age is just one factor to seo success and there are many others .

[andyf]

If a domain is quite old then there are chances of having good number of backlinks, hopefully webmaster must have worked for getting it or must have got naturally, old age domain are free of Sandbox effect....
In SEO age of domain is one of the important factor;

[KLB]

Looking at a couple of posts in this thread makes me think that some people could really benefit by Chris' latest SEO science vs. marketing blog entry. People really need to pay close attention to his comments about domain age, scientific principles and coincidence vs. causation.

Most SEO beliefs related to things like the sandbox effect are based on a complete failure to systematically separate coincidence, correlation and causation. As Chris states, factors like a domain's age may play absolutely no part in the lack of SEO success it may just be that new domains tend to lack certain characteristics that make old domains successful (e.g. lots of high quality and diverse back links to name but one).

[MarkTwen]

Exactly, its not that an old domain is beneficial purely because of it's age, its that old domains have all this baggage that comes with them that are generally beneficial.

So, if I use the old domain but change the content of the site, I'm not gonne have any benefits from domain's age?

[allout]

So, if I use the old domain but change the content of the site, I'm not gonne have any benefits from domain's age?

No that is not what he is saying. What he is saying is taht if the old domain has no backlinks already in place on other sites then unless it has a really good name it carries no extra benefit.

I purchased a domain name last year. It was just for a local site, so I did not even check for any backlinks. Turns out it has a backlink on a PR6 site and it makes my domain PR1. I have not done much promotion over a year and it stayed at that ranking. I changed content twice and the backlink's achor text is for someone's old site title but I still maintain PR1. I just assume that the place where the link is does not check for valid links.

[allout]

Well I did nothing for a year and my PR1 stayed at PR1. The only links I had was from a site that was out of business for two years and the link was only on one site. As long as the sites that have the links don't remove them, you will still benefit from them.

Of course there is always the chance that the sites will revoce the links and that will affect your backlink strength. Type the domain in the search engines and see how many links come up and then check your PR for taht domain on many of the tools Online.

I would not base your whole reason to purchase a name on this. I bought my because I wanted the name and only found out later that it was PR1.

Hope this helps.

[Chris]

Google has been known to zero PageRank/links on bought domains/expired domains.

However, if it wasn't expired, and just bought buy you, there is a good chance you will benefit from it's old links. Realize though that if the topic of the site changes that benefit will be decidedly less.

[allout]

I agree with that Chris. Looks like with the new Update taht the PR stayed the same. I promoted a lot in the last month but no change.