How much does domain age play a part today?

[HiddenPeak]

My specific reason for asking this is due to the need to consolidate two of my client's websites into one main umbrella. The two websites now are duplicating content between each other. They are essentially the same business with two locations. The goal is to have one website to build authority on, reduce management/maintenance time and eliminate the duplicate content issues.

In doing so, we will need to use a completely different domain name for branding reasons. I'm concerned that this may hurt us due to it being a brand new domain name. With the current websites, one domain is 8 years old and the other 2 years old.

[KevinBudzynski]

With all things being equal, an older domain is typically better for SEO reasons. However, if you are doing your redirects correctly to the new domain, should be no issue.

[ditoroin]

Matt Cutts somewhere said that the difference between a domain that's six month old verses one year old is really not that big at all. So we can guess that they use domain age as a ranking factor, but it is not so important.

There is a great infographic about Google ranking factors: http://www.entrepreneur.com/dbimages/article/ranking_factors_infographic_2.jpg

[irvingw]

How difficult would it be to rewrite the content? There are definite benefits to having two standalone sites, especially since they are different locations it's all on the up and up.

a) Having two sites means possibly ranking on the first page twice

b) In a world where Google keeps changing the rules and keeps penalizing it's good to not have all your eggs in one basket

c) Throwing away a established aged domain with PR seems like a waste, especially if it's ranking

d) Two sites gives you the ability to market differently, if one massage doesn't speak well to a particular audience perhaps the other site will and vice versa

[HiddenPeak]

Thank you so much for your response. It may be limiting to them in some ways for marketing, but its also a beneficial change as well. I think if domain age isn't going to play too much of a part, then all the other factors still justify the change.

Thanks again!