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It seems that Google has finally gone on the record that longer domain name registration has no impact on your search engine rankings, at least not at Google. A Google Webmaster Help thread has a post from Googler, JohnMu, who said outright that it doesn't make sense for Google to use this as a ranking metric.
Let me quote John:
A bunch of TLDs do not publish expiration dates -- how could we compare domains with expiration dates to domains without that information? It seems that would be pretty hard, and likely not worth the trouble. Even when we do have that data, what would it tell us when comparing sites that are otherwise equivalent? A year (the minimum duration, as far as I know) is pretty long in internet-time :-).
I think that is pretty convincing that Google doesn't use the domain expire date as a metric.
What is funny is that we discussed this topic a few times in the past. Each time, we never really came to a conclusion. But it didn't stop domain registrars from using this as a marketing tactic.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
Comments:
Gudipudi
09/09/2009 01:30 pm
yeah you are right .....length of the domain( expiration date) does not matter , but age of the domain( since how long it has been registered) does matter
Michael Martinez
09/09/2009 05:33 pm
Domain age is an indicator that a site has history, but if the history does not hold up well under inspection the age isn't going to do it any good. The SEO community likes to attach itself to short-sighted thinking on a lot of issues. Folks need to look beyond what "aged domain" seems to imply and understand that it cannot be separated from "how the domain has behaved over time".
Pravesh Pushp
09/10/2009 03:53 am
absolute right
Tobias
09/14/2009 03:25 pm
There is a similar discussion that regularly occurs regarding keywords in the domain and file paths. Google has alluded a number of times to the fact that although it is not essential there is some relevancy. Check out the oldest live domain symbolics.com, the site has always been a train wreck however still maintains a PR5. Matt Cutts has spoken a couple of times on this issue this year, mentioning a 'Historical Data' patent that might be part of the algorithmn. Also weigh up hopw hard it is to build on a new domain and compete for competitive keywords. All shows that the domain registration is important. Granted it depends what has been done on that domain, however if you look at symbolics.com and see all the spammy links to it, as well as all dodgy sub domains that are indexed by Google, it is tough to see where it is getting it's PR [*cough* spoofing]. It has quite a few links but they seem to be irrelevant and from bad sources. Would be interested to hear any feedback. Search Engine Land have done some good coverage on this subject over the last 6 months.
Edward Witt
06/24/2010 02:45 am
Intresting that this is brought up, I also heard that google does look at registration, and might increase indexing faster, which makes some sense, but I wouldn't think ranking would play a part because then we could all just by a domain for 10yrs and get 1-2nd page instantly. IMHO.
Ahmadmsallam92
01/10/2011 07:16 pm
nice to know because my web host owner tried to convene me to purchase a domain name for fife years saying that it affects my ranking :) but now i know whats right
Domain registration
10/15/2011 09:22 am
How it is possible Actually choosing a domain name is the very first step of SEO strategy