Quick question regarding length of domain registration

[John Romaine]

Im curious to know whether or not the registration period of a domain has any affect on ranking within Google. As far as I know, Google scrapes whois information for domains, so Im just wondering if they rank sites higher with longer domain registration periods, or if there is any preferences given to such registrations.

Thoughts?

[taylorwinfield4]

There has been some discussion online which suggests that if you have a longer registration period such as 2-3yrs rather than 1yr, then Google takes you "more seriously" and see's you as less of a hit and run sort of domain, Ranking you higher.

Whether or not this is actually true is debatable though, I have only ever registered 1yr domains and they have ranked fine on Google's first page!

[John Romaine]

Yeah thanks Taylor, Ive experienced the same findings. I just thought Id ask out of curiosity.

[DogScout]

In my testing, it is one small part of their algorithm. I do not think it even kicks in until a domain is registered for 5+ years though. As far as I could tell. The part is so small, I am not sure it is worth worrying about unless you know you will want the domain in 5 years and have the cash flow. As pointed out, going year to year won't keep you off position one.

[BradBergeron]

Are you referring to domain age? If yes, domain age plays a very large part in the SERP rankings!
Here's a good article (no, it's not mine ) on domain age that I got just by searching domain age and clicking a first page result.

Domain Age: How Important Is It for SEO? | Search Engine Journal

[forfun_cash]

no doubt that aged domains are more recognised by google.

[petevamp]

You have brought up a good but yet powerful discussion here.

According to what I hear is that yes google does rank sites higher for the longer they have been around. Also though if you are able to obtain a domain name with less then 15 characters this also helps with ranking. However if you want to rank higher over other sites instead of using a .net or .com tld try using a .org instead.

I will explain why:

first google sees .org sites as informational sites and not sales sites. Which would give you more weight in the search engines. However if there is a .com url of the same and they have been around longer they may out weigh you depending upon how well that .com url has been building their links.

Second with a .org url you can build less links for your url and rank higher over a .net and .com url for the simple fact once again google see this as a free information site and not a sales site. You can still make it a sales site but you need to provide some free information as to what you are promoting as well.

[bgmacaw]

The registration period does not matter although domainers and domain name sellers will try to sell you on this idea...wonder why.

Domain age by itself doesn't matter. An undeveloped 10 year old domain with no link history isn't any better than a brand new domain name.

Domain age plus established content plus aged links does mean something.

[Algo]

I haven't seen any meaningful evidence that a domain signed up for 3 to 5 years of registration gets a bump in the SERPs over those registered year to year. Without clear-cut evidence that it helps significantly, there's no reason to do it, other than to save a few dollars over time.

But given that you have no way of knowing whether your site will be a success from day one, just go year to year on domain registration until the site is established enough that you can safely predict that it will be around for more than one year.

This, of course is different than the question of whether a site which has existed for several years gets a bump over new sites... they definitely do.

And use the auto-renew option if your host offers it. It is too easy to forget and miss a renewal date. You don't want to lose a revenue-generating site because you lost track of the date.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Algo

And use the auto-renew option if your host offers it. It is too easy to forget and miss a renewal date. You don't want to lose a revenue-generating site because you lost track of the date.

How true. A number of previously owned domains I now own got that way because the owner had registered it for 3+ years and forgot to update the credit card and/or email address info on file with GoDaddy or whoever. The credit card expired and/or they didn't get renewal emails and thus lost the domain.