Domain Aging - Fact or Fiction?
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Barry Goggin October 27, 2008
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Domain age has been touted as a factor in the valuation of a domain but is this really true or is it a popular myth?
I was reading a french domaining blog post La valorisation des noms de domaine - l’ancienneté.
I struggled through with my schoolbook french and a rather unhelpful
Babelfish but caught the gist of the post.I wanted to weigh in with my
own views and experience with this and hopefully hear your views.
Domain age since registration
Let me be blunt. I do not think that this gives a domain any
advantage whatsoever and therefore should not factor into value. A
domain that was registered back in the prehistoric times of the
Internet is more likely to be valuable but that is due to the fact that
high quality names were available then and so their value comes from
the name itself, not the registration date.
Domain age in index
The length of time a domain have been indexed especially by Google
is almost certainly a positive factor. A domain that has been
continuously indexed for a good amount of time means that it is less
likely to be a fly by night operation and less likely to be a spammy
site. In short an element of “trust” has been established. This is the
domain age factor that I believe is referred to in ranking patents from
search engine companies. This is the age that should affect value but
there are some qualifications to that as I will explain.
Domain age and parked pages
Parked pages in general are not indexed or may be indexed for short
periods of time. They generally have little content and no back links.
As such no matter when they were registered, they have not built any
“trust”. Therefore again domain age in the index is what is key and
parked pages don’t benefit.
Domain age and dropped domains
Dropped domains will often also drop out of the search engine’s
indexes, lose inbound links to interior pages and often be treated like
any newly registered domain hosting a website by the search engines.
The value instead will come from the quality of the name itself and any
residual traffic.
Domain age and its history
An old domain which has hosted a site that violated a search
engine’s terms of service and was therefore penalized or de-indexed is
likely to have lost some or all the benefits of index aging. To guard
against this, you should always check the Internet Archive aka Wayback
Machine to see how the domain has been used.
Domain age and theming
Perhaps more controversial is whether a domain name needs to have
hosted websites that maintain a consistent theme e.g. mercury.com being
used for the planet mercury or being used for the element mercury. I am
unsure if this is important but I would worry more about the
pre-existing incoming links and whether they would be relevant if the
theme is changed.
Domain age and inbound link age
Clearly inbound links rule indexing and ranking especially in
Google. The age of the inbound link is certainly one factor that helps
ranking and older domains with websites tend to accumulate and aged
links.
The bottom line on domain age
Domain valuation is the estimated price a buyer will pay for a
domain and as such is based on established facts but also on
established myths and preconceptions. If the buyer thinks that a domain
that was registered many years ago and left parked is better than a
very similar domain that was only registered last year then they will
be more willing to pay a higher price for the former. As a buyer
though, that perceived value is unlikely to translate into any
advantage in the indexing and ranking of their website.
What a buyer should look for
With regards to domain age, look for
- domain age in index
- continuous indexing
- lack of search engine TOS violations
- aged inbound links
I have had really good experiences with buying older domains with
stable websites on them but of course these will cost you more money.
Next time I will talk about how to find such domains at reasonable
cost. Also I will show you how to preserve the real value of those
domains and websites because quite a few people make mistakes that
destroy the advantages of buying such domains. |