netmeg - 8:11 pm on Nov 20, 2006 (gmt 0)

While I think Google may look to the past to see how long a domain has been around, I've never seen anything that led me to believe that they pay attention to how long it's registered for in the future. The main advantage to registering for more than two years at a time is the convenience of not having to worry about it for a while. The main disadvantage is that you don't know if the company with whom you registered is still going to be around in ten years. I just spent a couple of weeks wresting back control of three domains for a client who registered them with a reseller who'd gone out of business, with all the contacts and everything but the actual registrant listing as the reseller, rather than the client. It was NOT pretty.