Forum Moderators: open
[edited by: Sharpseo at 5:58 pm (utc) on April 24, 2007]
I think the age/quality of the links that a site has is the important factor, not the age of the domain itself. I've launched domains that have been registered/parked continuously since 1996 and ones that are brand-spanking new. The old domains have the same breaking-in period as the new ones (unless they old inbound links).
I have experience to the contrary, and believe age of domain, depending up exactly what that means, clearly plays a role. Simply registering, or registering and parking, a domain is not the ticket...
We've certainly had better experience ranking an aged domain versus a new one. What is on the site, and how it's linked to over time, have everthing to do with it IMO.
As for timing, if you're not ranking a site after a year, measured from the time the first backlink appears, then something else is wrong. A good site can emerge far faster than that.
I'm not sure I worded my statement clearly. My experience is that an old domain by itself doesn't help. It only helps if that old domain was a real site at some point and has (or had) some inbound links.
Caveman, are you saying the age of the domain, by itself, is an important factor?
Yes almost certainly, except that I don't want to play by your rules. ;-) I'm assuming something other than a blank or 404 page.
It has been aluded to in pervious papers, and in fact just today there is discussion going on of some new patent filings that all but confirm it.
[webmasterworld.com...]
I'm not going to go into how we've proved it to ourselves, but we've done so to my personal satisfaction. You could probably think about it for a bit and construct a test that would get you to the same place. Hint: Understand what an inception date is in the eyes of a SE. ;-)
I'm assuming something other than a blank or 404 page.
Would that something be a site with backlinks? :) What I'm saying is that the important factor seems to be the age of the links, not the whois/registration info.
The inception date referred to in their patent filings seems to be the date that references (links) to that site are first discovered, not the original domain registration date.
I've seen a lot of speculation that the original registration date of a site matters, but that doesn't seem to make sense.
Maybe my understanding of the terminology here is wrong, it seems like we're almost saying the same thing :)
One needs to break down the pieces of the issue and look at exactly what the SE's are saying and doing.
Most of the debate has centered on a very misleading question: "Is it the age of the domain, the age of the backlinks, or both." I dunno if it's disinformation by some clever Web players, or just simply not enough people paying attention, reading the papers, and working with new site launches...
The fabric of what's going on here is more complicated than that: Two critical components connected to the lag in rankings that new sites experience are completely missing from the "age of domain vs. age of backlinks" question. Result: Webmasters are missing the big picture, and pretty much have been even since the inception of G's so-called sandbox (and subsequent actions apparently taken be Y!). ;-)
I've launched domains that have been registered/parked continuously since 1996 and ones that are brand-spanking new. The old domains have the same breaking-in period as the new ones (unless they old inbound links).
