How does Google determine the value of a domain name by age? They don’t consider domain name age as an SEO factor at all. They only consider site age. There is a big difference between a domain name and a website. I always see domain name resellers showcasing “aged” domains as if that has some value. Well, it doesn’t have much value at all, for SEO purposes, as far as Google is concerned. The only real value of the age factor is, IF there was always a website on it. So, the next time you consider buying an aged domain name, do your due diligence and check out the Way Back Machine to see if there was an actual website there- and hopefully it wasn’t too long ago.
This we do know- Google places no value whatsoever on domain name age, as it appears in the whois information. Matt Cutts explains in this video…
Google doesn’t even look at the whois information. Matt Cutts says so himself. They only go by when they saw the first link to it. Only at that moment does Google even crawl the site. Then, when they do crawl and index it, it had better have some content on it. At that time, Google checks how many links there are; what rank the sites have that link to it; and most importantly, if the site has quality content. I’m not sure how Google’s computers can determine quality content. There’s a human factor needed in my not-so humble opinion. Then again, they have tens of thousands of employees, so just maybe they do a lot of manual indexing. Who knows.
Matt Cutts Explains Domain Age SEO Factor:
All this time, I thought domain age meant something. In fact, I have bought many aged names over the years, and some I have developed into websites, even though they weren’t all that catchy. This one included. Well, actually domain age does matter as an SEO factor, IF there was a site on it before, and there are links to it- good links. And this bears repeating- Google must determine you have “quality content”.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
BIO:
Ken Skaggs is a 30-year veteran trucker and safety professional, who has always been a writer, and an entrepreneur at heart. Since 2000, he’s had 150+ articles published by Ten-Four Magazine, Careers in Gear, Driver Story Magazine, and dozens of websites.