Domain Name History Question

[activitysuper]

Hi,

When launching a new domain, do you think Google holds these back in the rankings for a certain time period?

I have noticed with a few, the rankings are held back for a few months (10 page deep results when the site's first indexed and ranked), then almost like a switch rankings start to come through pretty aggressively in some cases.

For example: a result could be on page 16 for a month or so, then all of a sudden jump through to page 6 (with no link building or site update), at this point the result would stay steady and would need work to push through.

Anyone else get this, or does anyone have any insight about domain history and Google.

Cheers

[RobertFisher]

activitysuper

Anecdotally, I would have to say that Google does not hold them back. First, even you say,"I have noticed with a few..." which would mean not with all or most. We put up a few sites each month and we see some that are new domains that are rocketed fairly quickly, some fall back, some stay. We see others that are the slog through to ranking, etc. I think it depends on many factors:
Linking day one, site map submissions, indexing on all engines asap, in GWMT or not, site architecture, vertical competitiveness, on page, on site, etc.

I do believe, again anecdotally, that there are times when a site seems to be pushed to the top by Google and "tested" for lack of a better word. Where in a tough vertical all of a sudden there is a new page showing with no authority/PR and then a few days later it is not. I keep waiting for Larry or Sergey to call and explain it to me...

Best,

[activitysuper]

Thanks Rob,

So how important are the task you carry out in the first few days? I tend to hook up WMT with a xml sitemap pretty much as soon as its launched, submit manually to Google, fetch in WMT and submit for indexing but that's pretty much it.

I then wait until the site is indexed, see where I stand and then start working the rankings for the search term which generates the most traffic in the hope that traffic will generate enough exposure to help the other pages (terms) start to rank better.

The thing that's got stuck (thinking wise), is how comes some results on page 1 have DA/PA 20/25, a few pages deeper and the results are now not even targeting the term, things like squidoo pages, youtube videos, blog posts etc are coming up - ive targeted the search term exactly in the title tag, generated 500 words unique of content around the search term and on index sitting 160 results deep? The only thing I can think of is it's only been indexed for a week or so.

Thanks

[RobertFisher]

My question would be this, you are saying it is new, but that you have DA/PA of 20/25? This is not new to me. A "new" domain starts out at 1 and goes up. If you are getting them to 20 in a week, please tell me how.

I think you may have meant you made changes, but am quite unclear.

[activitysuper]

I haven't made it very clear so apologies, all the questions are around a fictitious website - im just trying to understand things better and get answers to questions I have had in the past.

Example:

I have a new website, it targets 1 search term exactly in the title tag and has 500+ words of unique content revolving around the target term.

Website goes live, gets indexed and the website sits 160 results deep (16 pages) - the website has 0 DA/PA.

Now, the results that sit on page 1 for the search term have fairly low DA/PA lets say half of them have DA/PA 20/25.

If you go deeper into the results (pages 3/4/5) these are now results with DA/PA 6/9 but also don't actively target the term, so the title tag for these guys are partially matching the target term and the on page copy is not optimised towards the term.

• How comes my result sits so far down the results against other results which are not even targeting the term, which don't have much DA/PA and are not optimised for the term?

Like I said there is squidoo pages, youtube videos, blog posts, apple app results higher then me some even have PA 0.

So basically I have optimised for this term (onsite) and have non-relevant websites beating me in the SERP's with little Auth.

Oh and when I check there backlink profile in OSE they don't have any links coming in.

Thanks for your time as well.

[RobertFisher]

I am going to keep it brief and say this: Google is using an algorithm that mathematically combines 200+ factors. Within that there are many ways to have an odd result here or there.

So, what I suggest is to look at a couple of things and determine your answer:

Search engine ranking factors on moz. (These are opinions)

Search engine periodic table from SearchEngineLand

From these, you can see what matters to move something up. As to your search and where you land there are even additional factors like are you using non personalized search or are your results impacted by previous searches?

So, a bit to learn,

Good luck,