How does your urls age affect your ranking.

[Feily]

HI,

How does the age of your url affect your rankings

Thanks

[matbennett]

Hi Feilim,

As with many things in SEO, no-one outside of Google truly knows the answer.  It is so difficult to isolate the effects of any one ranking factor that accurate measurement of it's impact is often impossible.

However - we get clues. These come from Google themselves, people doing experiments and analysis of other information (the work of Bill Slawski analysing search engine patents comes to mind )

Most people agree that domain age is a factor. A lot of low quality sites are created on a "churn and burn" type principal, so it makes sense that a site that has been active for a longer time is more likely to be more trustworthy than a newer one.

Whether that effect comes from the actual age of the domain, how long the site has been in googles index or the backlink history (or all 3 in different proportions) is harder to tell. However older sites do appear to have an advantage of some sort.

However, don't get age and standing confused. A newer site that is better cited can easily outrank an older site that have few good backlinks.

I hope that answer is helpful. I know it isn't that clear cut, but few things in search are!

A couple of related resources that you might find interesting:

• Search engine ranking factors : Results of an annual survey of "top SEOs" looking at the question of what makes a site rank.
• SEO by the Sea : Bill Slawski's blog (mentioned above) Essential reading if you are serious

[RyanKent]

How does the age of your url affect your rankings

Mat's response is well thought out, but I will offer a different viewpoint. I have the strong opinion domain age has no affect on ranking...zero..zilch...nada.

Here is where the confusion lies. Older domains are generally the most valuable ones. Think of all the well established businesses which picked up their domains 10+ years ago: IBM, McDonalds, Google, etc.

Also think of the short keyword domain names such as insurance.com which were taken first and have been able to establish themselves largely due to their domain name.

When most people ask the question "will older domains rank better then newer ones" they are in the market to purchase a domain and want to know if they purchase "domain777.com" which was first registered 5 years ago will it rank better then "domain888.com" which has never been registered. According to all the information I have seen the answer is no.

The below video by Matt Cutts responds to the question. I would also share that when Matt says "not much" and "I wouldn't worry about it" the translation ranges between zero and 0.00000001. Sometimes there is an obscure way information can be used which practically has no impact but theoretically could arise in a given circumstance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1_1NQWQJ2Q

[matbennett]

Interesting take on the question. If you are talking about buying an "old" domain I'd definitely  agree. Google know when (most) domains change hands and benefits from old domains that have been resold seem to reset.

However that video is not actually answering this question. That video is about how long you register a domain for (future) as opposed to age (past).  There was a flurry of talk a while back about how registering your domain for 10 years rather than 2 would help and that video appears to be addressing that point rather than the point about domain age.

[RyanKent]

You are right Mat. I interpreted the question to be related to the domain age which may not have been what Feilim was asking about.

On the subject of domain age on rankings, here is another Matt Cutts video which may be helpful: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pnpg00FWJY