Recently domain age was added to the algorithm of Google and is one of the many factors they consider now to rank websites at the top of its search engine. But what is domain age?, why is important? How can be check? And how this factor can be improved? Those are common questions that I’ll try to address on the following post regarding domain age of a website.
Domain age is a quantifiable value assigned by search engines based on these three factors:
- Registration date
- Expiration date
- Frequency of changes over time.
Google’s patent “Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data” filed on 03/31/2005 implies that Google does look into domain registration (1), renewal dates (2) and frequency of changes over time (3).
- Registraton Date
Well-established sites have old domain names, so by reverse logics, an old domain should mean that the site is well established. Well-establishes companies were among the first one to luck their domain names, while new domain means companies are relatively new or can be used for spam or other purposes. The longer the domain name has been around the better for search engines. - Expiraion Date
Google and other search engines like to see domains that have been registered for extended periods of time as this shows a commitment to the domain name. It also is an indicator that this website is not a temporary spam site. For example, domains can be renewed up to a period of 10 years. Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain and, thus, the documents associated therewith. - Frequency of changes over time.
Old domains that have been registered for a long time ago not necessarily mean they have better information. Domain names registered long time ago that have been parked for a while could be considered much less important than new domains with high activity and updated information; that’s why Google consider the frequency of changes over time as one of the factors to weight your domain age.
How can my domain age be improved?
As opposite as many believe the domain age factor on your website could be improved and help you rank higher on search engines. As we have seen the domain age is mainly the combination of three factors, one of them fix and two of them variable. The date when you register your domain name cannot be modified of course, is like your date of birth, you cannot just simple get older even if you try very hard, but there are two variables that can be help you get a better domain age, one is extending the expiration date of your website, so the next time you register your domain don’t choose 1 year, but at least 5 or 10 if possible, that shows Google you are really commit to your business and perhaps you can get a better grade, the other variable that can be improved is to apply regular changes to your site, the more updated information you have available the better your domain age will be. So if the registration date of your site is a disadvantage make sure the information of your site is current and is being updated on a regular basis.
How can I check my domain age?
The simplest way is to go to any Whois service and review the date when the domain was registered, I personally like Whois or Network Solutions there are also some simpler pages where just give you this information on a clean and interface, such as domainage.us or SEOmoz and if you want to check domain age but also the domain age of your competition you can use this practical domain age checker tool where you can check several domains at once, please keep in mind that all these sites just check how long your domain has been registered but it doesn’t give you a real interpretation of your domain age as Google understands it.
This article has been written by Libardo Lambrano, founder of Syndikomm; an online marketing firm based in New York city and specialized in multicultural markets. Libardo Lambrano, a digital citizen of the world can be reached@llambrano